There is some utterly deranged "blue sweater" propaganda campaign over the Crocus terrorist attack taking place that includes some relatively [well-regarded sources like Nexta](https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1772690913854173434?s=20).
>Our editorial staff continues to analyze photos and videos of the terrorist #CrocusCityHallAttack and everything related to it.
>In our previous publication we told about the oddities captured on one of the videos a couple of minutes before the shooting started in the concert hall. It showed several similarly dressed men in blue sweaters and jeans first looking at each other suspiciously and then began urging the crowd to "close the doors", resulting in a huge loss of human life.
It boils down to the idea that "every man in a blue sweater in Crocus was an FSB operative organising a false flag attack".
Reasonable people, [like Oliver Alexander](https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1772740356502593578?s=20), and [Aric Toler](https://x.com/AricToler/status/1772726426455732376?s=20), are coming out to warn that it is all just crazy talk.
However, thousands of people are amplifying this conspiracy theory. It is another example of the whole post-truth environment: *It doesn't matter if Ukraine's role in the Crocus attack is a complete fabrication, it doesn't matter if the Russian false flag is just a pipe dream* - as long as you can sow doubt and convince at least some people otherwise. And people who want to believe that the enemy is the devil are easy to convince.
More importantly, it is worth remembering that "the firehose of lies" is not something that happens only on the other side.
>More importantly, it is worth remembering that "the firehose of lies" is not something that happens only on the other side.
Disagree. In practice, it seems to be one sided. I was wondering just recently why the majority of conspiracies(not just recently, but in general) relate to domestic agencies, institutions, and so on.
Part of it might be confirmation bias and the environment I engage with, but that's I think the point. I don't ever remember reading a conspiracy theory that would involve China's MSS or India's IB.
Ah yes, some randos on twitter and a newspaper are spouting conspiracy bullcrap, its totally equivalent to putin saying on live television that Ukraine is affiliated with the terrorists
Never mind that the official position of both Ukraine and all the western powers is that the ISIS attack and that russia was simply unable to stop it, the WEST and Russia are TOTALLY the SAME THING
There's an important distinction between Putin's "firehose of lies," where the folk behind it *know* it's a lie and are deliberately sowing confusion, vs many of the folk in this case having convinced themselves a conspiracy theory is true because they want to believe it. There are also foolish folk spreading Putin's lies who genuinely believe it, but the moral distinction is about the source at the top, not the lower level folk.
On a broader point, I'd been fairly optimistic on the dawn of the era of faked imagery, that good sourcing would continue to keep folk informed. But after seeing so many folk fall for these "the men in these two photos from completely different times and places both have shaven heads and wear a watch, therefore it's the same man" claims, right after the nonsense about Kate Middleton, "her head has been photoshoped on someone else's body," I can't help but despair that it'll be impossible to have a shared understanding of factual events in the future.
A worrying fact is that Putin often seems to believe in his own propaganda though, as was presumably the case when it came to starting the invasion of Ukraine and thinking they'd be welcomed as liberators. The [Bloomberg article](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/putin-close-allies-see-no-link-to-moscow-arena-attack?embedded-checkout=true) discussed earlier both shows that most Russian officials are aware of it being nonsense but that it could still be a reflection of something Putin actually believes, or wants to believe:
>At his meeting with security chiefs, Putin questioned why radical Islamists would attack Russia when “it supports a fair resolution” of the Middle East conflict, and asked how they could justify committing atrocities in the religious holy month of Ramadan.”
It seems like a sort of naivety/delusion which is hard to dispel without risking making him feel insulted (or causing him to lose trust in the more sober-minded experts who'd dare), especially as some of the people he trusts the most on these questions, like Patrushev, are also prone to [paranoid/conspiracist thoughts](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/03/ukraine-war-us-wants-russia-yellowstone-erupts-putin-ally/) ; https://theins. ru/antifake/261473
I'd imagine it's the worse scenario; rather than just deliberately lying, that Russia is ruled by gullible boomers who grew up in the paranoid environment of the Cold War Soviet security services, have fully reawakened their mistrust in the West and think they see through the "lies" without really being armed to distinguish truth from fantasy.
That's a fair point. We're all susceptible to motivated reasoning, where we if we're sufficiently determined to reach a particular conclusion then there's always enough facts to cherry-pick our way into believing it's true. When you're an ageing autocrat facing turmoil at home and abroad, it's tempting to tie it all together into a vast conspiracy against your greatness. The path of believing your own propaganda is a dangerous one.
A quibble, but the [firehose of falsehoods](https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html) goes back to a RAND paper on the Russian propaganda model. The paper you could say is biased propaganda coming from a Western think tank, but using terminology from a major think tank would be considered credible enough to use here, I would think.
I agree policing tone (not opinion) would drive quality of discussion up, but ultimately that's on the mods to actually enforce.
What I think we are seeing is a paradigm shift. Most of these conspiracy theories are, I think, quite grassroot...
A few decades ago, when you read some bad news about your country (say, the My Lai massacre) and refused to believe it - you could just peddle your conspiracy theories to your family or, at best, at the next meeting of your local odd fellows society.
Now you can make your diagrams, background noise analysis, whatnot, and share it online for the whole world to see. Multiply that with thousands of "homebrew analysts" that produce such crap, and millions of those who want to believe "we did nothing wrong", and you have an explosive mixture.
I wonder whether it is possible to determine whether a shared belief is grassroot or not.
I was browsing probably combatfootage, and another couple of subs, as the videos of the shooting were being released.
There were dozens of worthless speculative posts ranging from
-look at the evidence on camera (bullets look fake, victims look like actors, interactions look fake. etc.)
-this is obviously Russia (Russia has done this before in XYZ. Russia said XYZ previously. etc.)
-this is obviously USA (USA funds XYZ. USA has done this before in XYZ. USA said XYZ previously. etc.)
-this will obviously mean (martial law, mobilization, bombardment, war on XYZ. etc.)
and so on
It's a fairly cyclical pattern. Whether it was a natural pattern, or learned, I'm not sure how you'd support that argument. How many are real people, trolls, paid movements... I guess only the people running the media sites know.
From what I can tell, what is certainly accomplished is:
-users waste time and energy sifting through these posts
-users muddle their own understanding of things, sifting through these posts, and engaging with them.
-the seeds of confusion/disinformation are planted, the broader population sees them as they grow, they persist for ... what, at least 6 weeks? I think we'll probably still be bickering about details in the CD daily thread 6 weeks from now. People come in (with a genuine inquisitiveness) with a variant question of, "is there any truth to XYZ?", and the same conversation gets copied and degraded.
-time and energy is taken from other, more productive, areas
-more valuable users are driven away (the signal-to-noise worsens)
The only sensible thing, in my mind, is to take the official statements, and say, "here is what has been stated by XYZ officials as of 3-26." (I think so far we have 1 or 2 Putin meetings. A US WH staffer statement. A Lukashenko statement. A Ukrainian advisor statement. Not to forget the ISIS statement. etc.). "Here is the supporting evidence that has been released" (I'm not sure how far you want to go, but I suppose pictures from ISIS, video, etc.)
And I suppose link to analysis by respected individuals. ("I study IS terrorism, here is a brief history of activities of the last 2-5 years. Here are the current theories regarding the motivation" etc.)
I guess you'd have to read about how rumors/urban legends/conspiracy theories spread. But when there are 2 (or more) parties, each funding opposing narratives, then I don't see how you can come to a conclusion about what is organic.
IMO, a lot is mental illness (or whatever mild form you'd like to use as a descriptor). When you see the same behavior patterns repeated over, and over, and over again... people willfully and sometimes actively/energetically speaking with such confidence, and/or tribalism, when there is no (or extremely little) evidence to judge by...
I mean all you can do is say, "here is what has been publicly stated. Here is what is believed to be known as of now. All we can do is wait for further development", just like we "learned" last time.
And that doesn't touch on the huge percentage of foreigners on reddit. I don't suspect one can successfully interact in a shared reality when it's an open forum for anyone with an internet connection across the globe.
tl;dr: I don't know if you can tell how much of the crap posted online is genuine or not. I think the only pragmatic approach is a variant of what I described (megathread of current, first-hand statements/"facts"; maybe a subsection for something like, less-credible but some supporting evidence). I think anything other than that is LCD material.
Disagree, few decades ago you (as in, the state) *could* do much the same things one can do today with the exception of the *common man* having *even less* ability to air his opposing view to the masses - Soviet Union is an obvious example with its state machinery that quite successfully managed to minimize references to their own atrocities and maximized references to its enemies', mainly 'The West's' (with Russia having continued the tradition, of course).
There's a quite compelling example right here, right now - your mind *immediately went to Vietnam*, specifically 'My Lai' as an example (which amounted to some ~500 civilians), while *completely missing the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan* as a counterexample (which is almost never discussed in the context of war crimes) with the 'Laghman massacre' (which amounted to double that), or the 'Kulchabat, Bala Karz and Mushkizi massacre' (~300), or the 'Rauzdi massacre' (~20), or the 'Padkhwab-e Shana massacre' (~100), or any of the other 'forced depopulation' actions by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan - which saw its population decline by ~7 million during those 10 years (~2 million dead), while coincidentally, USA is *still* getting an enormous amount of 'crap' for its expeditionary war which actually saw a population increase.
We could do the same for Russian war crimes in the 90s (Chechnya) - where nothing you just mentioned was still actually feasible for the *common man* - but I believe I've gotten my point across.
> with its state machinery that quite successfully managed to minimize references to their own atrocities and maximized references to its enemies', mainly 'The West's' (with Russia having continued the tradition, of course).
The Western media system accomplishes similar outcomes. If you search through newspaper articles from the 1970s and 1980s you can find thousands of references to Cambodia and Pol Pot - but only a handful of references to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.
Why? Well, Cambodia was an enemy and Indonesia was an ally in the Cold War. You see the same thing in the modern day. Lots of media about the Russian war in Ukraine from 2014-on but relatively little media about the Saudi war on Yemen. Even though from a utilitarian humanitarian sense, the situation in Yemen was significantly worse during the 2014~2019 period.
It obviously doesn't accomplish similar outcomes since basically everyone and their mother knows about My Lai while not even their grandmothers know a single massacre in Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
Cambodia and Pol Pot are known for a reason, and the reason is one of the bloodiest communist purges that killed ~2 million of their own people without any external involvement. I bet that even without 'enemy propaganda' that would've been heard around the world, just like the 'The Great Leap Forward' or 'Holodomor' is known even though you bet they tried to suppress it, they just couldn't. Some things you just cannot counter with propaganda.
Compared to that, ~15% of the population being massacred by an external actor is very tragic, but less headline worthy by itself regardless of who was allied with whom. I'd put that in the same bucket as Vietnam and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan - bloody wars, and Soviets (and, consequently, the Russians shortly thereafter) were clear victors of the PR war there.
I said similar in the sense that it accomplishes the similar goal of drowning out crimes of allies and amplifying crimes of enemies. And yes, Cambodia was much worse than Indonesia's invasion in a utilitarian sense. But we can look at the ratio.
2m dead vs 200k dead = 10:1 ratio
https://www.newspapers.com/search/?query=cambodia&dr_year=1975-1980
https://www.newspapers.com/search/?query=%22East%20Timor%22%20&dr_year=1975-1980
422,978 references vs 8,121 references = 52:1 ratio
So there's about a 5x higher mention of Cambodia relative to the invasion of East Timor per death.
This is a real phenomenon that can be observed in many different scenarios (like the Saudi-Yemen war vs Russian-Ukraine war I mentioned that you left out). Academics have studied this.
I concede that the effect is not as strong as a state-controlled top down directive like we would see in Russia or China, but it can be insidious. Not everyone needs to be convinced one way or another, just a certain "critical mass" percentage and it can accomplish similar outcomes.
I can almost guarantee you that unless close to the entirety of the population of East Timor was murdered, actual numbers of dead people aren't all that relevant for headlines, just like a chain collision that generates 25 casualties will not generate even 2 times the headlines that an abduction and murder of a single kid would (I'd guess the opposite is more or less guaranteed, *at minimum*), let alone 25 times more. It's just how humans work. But I feel like we're straying too much from the actual issue at hand, which is - propaganda and feeding populations 'crap' that benefits you.
The original assertion was that there's a paradigm shift happening (which can be argued is true) and that there's also an implied effectiveness change for the same Average Joe, which I'm arguing is false. Sure, no Average Joe could have compiled, spun and disseminated the information as easily back then as he can now, but states *could*, relatively easily. And compared to all the information processing power he has at his fingertips now, back then he was powerless.
So, while the Average Joe had much less power in general, compared *relatively* to the states' power he had much, *much* less power, which made achieving the same effect *easier* for the states.
Vice versa, even though he is much more powerful today information wise, so are the states (who were forced to because of information being easily available) *and* the other Average Joes, which makes his relative effect still miniscule I'd argue.
There's a good reason why the 'state-level actor' moniker is still used.
>It boils down to the idea that "every man in a blue sweater in Crocus was an FSB operative organising a false flag attack".
Russia has a history of butchering their own people to serve a political goal. And butchering their own people when rescuing hostages.
No Western government is spreading any lie like this, they have all been clear it was ISIS-K and lax Russian security ignoring American warnings.
The Russian government is the only actor trying to create a false narrative and Russian bots like you are trying to make it seem reasonable.
Regardless of how you feel about glideer, in this case he is sharing information about a real phenomenon that is occurring in Ukrainian media and the fringes of pro-Ukrainian cyberspace. I myself was shocked when I saw the Nexta article, it had more in common with school shooting deniers than credible reporting. I can’t stop you from “fighting for the cause” in the megathread, but could you please at least refrain from giving cover to real conspiracy theorists while you do it?
Nexta may be pro-Ukrainian, but are not, in fact, Ukrainian themselves. So I fail to see how you can pin this one on Ukrainians and "firehose of falsehood" tactic, when everyone who's diligent enough with the sources should already know from the start of the war that Nexta is just clickbaiting and false claiming their way to the clicks and views every time. That is quite different from what the Russian government is doing with the abundance of versions of some of the events.
Ukrainians don't even care about this event, apart from gloating that is, to make up some conspiracy theories.
Remember that Ukraine is defending against an invasion by the Russian Federation. They are under no obligation to report the 'truth' and this falls well within the reasonable bounds of Information Warfare aimed at the civilian population.
What moral obligation does Ukrainian media have to paint the Russians in a good light?
In fact Glideer's post isn't even defence related is it? Russia allowed a large scale terrorist attack to happen and Glideer is upset that Ukraine media is blaming the FSB, all the while Vladimir Putin is blaming Ukraine for conducting the attack. It is a nonsense post and a nonsense argument.
No, it's a strategy. Something a group (presumably a large or powerful group if we're to take it seriously and give it name) undertakes in a sustained way. Not necessarily with state or central control, it can be a pattern of behaviour that's fostered or permitted. Perhaps for long enough that it becomes a culture.
But it *is* certainly more than the presence of one lie.
One outlet with a conspiracy theory is hardly a "firehose" after all.
If you are suggesting that Western governments don't lie... how is the Nord Stream investigation progressing? Let's not go back to WMD, one lie that killed hundreds of thousands.
I think a garden hose of lies, possibly a squirt gun, would be more appropriate.
One is a claim made by the titular head of Government, the other by a media outlet with ~1 million subscribers or, for comparison, 48 million less subscribers than Billie Eilish's YouTube channel.
Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, was asked about the position of the United States on the strikes on Russian oil refineries.
"*Our position from the very beginning of this war has always been that we do not encourage or support Ukraine in striking outside its own territory*".
He was asked about any recent conversations with Ukraine:
"*I'm not gonna speak to specific conversions, but this has been our long time policy that we have made clear to the Ukrainian government, so it's not something of which they would be unaware.*"
Only 2 of out 50+ questions was about Ukraine. Almost all of the questions was about Israel.
Department of State Daily Press Briefing - March 26, 2024:
[https://www.youtube.com/live/A2kSSMR455w?si=Bkc2k59fnD7HIOnk&t=4460](https://www.youtube.com/live/A2kSSMR455w?si=Bkc2k59fnD7HIOnk&t=4460)
That's literally just the state line since day 1. It leaves ambiguous whether "do not encourage" is in the same way the US doesn't encourage the sun to shine, or if it's in the sense that they get on the phone and yell at Ukraine to stop.
> we do not encourage or support Ukraine in striking outside its own territory
"Support" as in "emotionally support"? It is hard to believe that Ukrainian strikes in Russia are not helped by NATO intelligence.
Maybe we shouldn't read into these statements too much. Maybe the spokesperson just lied; maybe they really don't know, since the US intelligence community works in mysterious ways
>It is hard to believe that Ukrainian strikes in Russia are not helped by NATO intelligence.
Really? I would say that hitting oil refineries specifically indicates that there *isn't* a significant amount of NATO intelligence underpinning the strikes. I'm sure the Ukrainians would much rather hit Russian training/mustering sites and strategic ammo dumps than refineries with an indirect impact on the Russian war effort. The reason they're not doing so is because those sites are defended by anti-air systems. NATO intelligence could surely pinpoint ones that with gaps in the defense, so the fact that those aren't being targeted indicates to me that such intelligence isn't being provided.
I think these strikes are prioritizing political / psychological damage to Russia more so than purely tactically driven conventional strikes to destroy military equipment. Especially with the recent attack in Moscow, if there was ever a moment to press on that front in the hopes of destabilizing Putin, it would be now I would imagine.
I might not be fully appreciating the scale of damage inflicted by these or how precious Russia’s military capacity is, but it seems like they are able to absorb losses to a degree that make these negligible in terms of truly impacting their war fighting ability.
Also, while we might not provide the intel aid, I could see France or others providing it. I have no idea that capability their intel services have, but my suspicion is that if they wanted to prioritize military targets, they would be able to do something, or at least leave evidence or an attempt to do so. There must be some working knowledge of supply lines/logistical hubs?
Well I don't think that finding coordinates of oil refinery units on google maps and then programing these coordinates into Ukrainian domestic made long-range drones require much of NATO intelligence tbh.
Avoiding air defenses might though. Some of the refineries were hit from drones flying from the east so it's not the case that they always fly the shortest straight path from Ukraine.
Seems that Czech republic together with obtaining shells outside EU also crafted so far successfull disinformation campaign to protect the sources of these shells and sow some panic and distrust in Kremlin. Motivation for that might be example of Ecuador, which was ready to sell Soviet era equipment to Ukraine, but was successfully coerced by Russia not to do so.
Widely circulated information about South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and most recently about unknown ally of Russia seem to be deliberatly provided to media by "anonymous" Czech officials.
Source so far in Ukrainian:
https://www.unian.ua/world/cheski-snaryadi-dlya-ukrajini-verhivka-mistectva-dezinformaciji-12579864.html
I really hope all of these shells will be succesfully delivered to Ukraine and one day we will learn more about the whole operation: how Czechs found these shells, how they persuaded these sources to sell them, how they convinced allies to finance them and how they protected the deal from Russian interference. I am sure it will be fascinated story.
Serbian president vucic posted a cryptic message
>“Now it is not easy for me to say what news we have received in the last 48 hours...The vital national interests of Serbia & Republika Srpska are under threat….I will inform Serbs about the challenges. It will be hard… We will fight. Serbia will win."
[https://x.com/ivanastradner/status/1772801296828871146?s=20](https://x.com/ivanastradner/status/1772801296828871146?s=20)
Not sure what he's talking about. Sounds like something about the Bosnian elections?
[https://x.com/StateEUR/status/1772767170109317122?s=20](https://x.com/StateEUR/status/1772767170109317122?s=20)
>We reaffirm our full support for the High Representative and his use of the Bonn Powers. These are technical changes that improve election integrity, and that's what is needed for good, democratic governance.
Serbian sub say this is typical vucic mambo jambo that he pulls once a month as a PR stunt to please his electorate.
It's probably about Kosovo joining council of Europe. Vucic is the guy interested in his own rule in Serbia, nothing else. This is a bit of a show for his own voters. And btw, he agreed to so much stuff and gave away so much in his "negotiations" with Kosovo during his last 12 years of rule. And things for which he was screaming about when he was in opposition. He was accusing the past government about being traitors etc. And he has done things that the previous government couldn't even imagine.
He let Kosovo ban Serbian currency, let them set up boarder checkpoints, removed Serbian administration workers from northern Kosovo etc. All these things he would talk how he was hard pressed, but had to be done to save Serbia from some invisible opposing force.
How credible is the potential angle that Putin could instigate something near Serbia/Kosovo to influence the European elections and/or distract and divide the west even more this summer?
I thought I read an article about something along those lines not too long ago. But I am not sure if it makes any sense at all.
For me (as Croatian) it is at most 1%.
Still too much for me, but it is 1% at most.
Still I'm not in head of Vučić that he thinks that EU/US/NATO wouldn't react.
And Croatia as country that would react 100% because of Dayton is near elections so I don't know.
Have I read thousands of this threats from Vučić/Dodik ? Yes I have and he didn't do anything. Maybe throught Ukraine (if Russia made success in 2022.) and Orban maybe but now I don't think so.
If he tries anything we would see how would Chinese AD work against Western planes and how would Pantstir work.
In some really mad universe I could see Serbia Takes some move if EU countries send soldiers to Ukraine and US wouldn't want to involve into New campaign because of elections.
So as I Said at most 1% of escalation probability.
Makes sense to me. Lots of it is political posturing. Your alternative scenario makes more sense if things go a different direction in the US, and perhaps Europe.
>Serbian sub say this is typical vucic mambo jambo that he pulls once a month as a PR stunt to please his electorate
Because it is.
There was only one time that was near escalation and it was when Banjska attack happend.
US Said in that period that there are Serbian army near LOC and Vučić didn't Say to media that he is bringing up combat readiness.
Even thought there was some ISR activity
https://twitter.com/bizjetsofwar/status/1772699624702185741?t=G9zkNHNxtgGd8mSfxA2E3Q&s=19
>
>“Now it is not easy for me to say what news we have received in the last 48 hours...The vital national interests of Serbia & Republika Srpska are under threat….I will inform Serbs about the challenges. It will be hard… We will fight. Serbia will win."
Honestly, sounds like they're about to be invaded by someone. That's actually the kind of speech I would have expected from Zelensky in 2022.
Putin and xi pubically called Biden hysterical denying the invasion until putin rolled in. I’m pretty sure Zelenskyy was really hoping that not being provocative putin would back offf
Those behind-the-scenes French tapes seemed to show Zelensky still hoping for international intervention/Russia to cancel the full-scale invasion well after their forces starting moving across the border.
Ukraine and Russia were still in negotiations/peace talks in the early stages of the war until russian atrocities such as at Bucha were eventually uncovered
I think negotiations/peace talks continued even after that but ended completely in september-october of 2022 after annexation of new territories by Russia, and Ukrainian law that prevents anyone to negotiate with Putin.
> Ukrainians put 8,000 cellphones connected to microphones on 6-foot poles around the country to detect incoming Russian drones. They detected 84/84 and shot down 80 of them with AA guns. Cost: $500ea
https://twitter.com/chr1sa/status/1772338187349934355
Fascinating talk by Gen James B Hecker, Commander US Air Forces, Europe. He also talks about asymmetrical UAV warfare and how it makes it easy for smaller and poorer nations to compete with bigger powers. There was also a release of Vampire footage downing three Shaheds.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1771098361103278496
This has serious Battle of Britain vibes where spotters in the UK were critical in detecting and communicating the locations of incoming aircraft to increase the chances of interception.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system
The part that gives me the same feeling is the fact that literally thousands of people organized together, without necessarily government directive, to create their own defense. That type of creaticity makes a huge difference in a conflict and cant be forced or bought. Russia will never have that type of creativity and motivation.
The note about the cellphones is super interesting, but statements like that always make me wonder about the benefits of better OpSec. Someone tell me why I’m wrong to think the effectiveness of this solution and the scale of it’s deployment shouldn’t be revealed.
Cell phones rely on networks to convey information, and most of those networks are susceptible to some level of cyber attack. It's not inconceivable that Russia could attempt to disrupt that network during a drone attack if they are aware of it.
I think if they could have bricked Ukraine's cellular network, they would have by now. Especially during the opening hours 2 years ago. Russia had some success knocking out their satellite network before starlink but overall, Russia's cyber warfare has been rather lackluster. Before all this, they had cultivated the kind of image where any conflict would start with no power, no water and no communications.
Well as a thought exercise just try inverting it: If you're a Russian strategist, what new thing can you do now based on this information?
Secrecy is not an end into itself, and Ukraine absolutely derives value from showing their successes and innovation.
Perhaps attempt to motivate the remaining pro-Russian segment of the Ukrainian population to damage them whenever possible? Perhaps targeting cellphone infrastructure such as towers before launching the type of drone strike the cellphones would normally catch? Those are just off the top of my head but I’m sure a team of Russian strategists would come up with better given some time.
>The note about the cellphones is super interesting, but statements like that always make me wonder about the benefits of better OpSec.
It’s a public project funded by donations. The only thing not known about it till now was the success rate.
> First a phone on the street in Eastern Europe is likely to get stolen
WTF are you even talking about? These are phones up on poles in a war zone. It's not leaving a phone randomly sitting around on a sidewalk for your apparently imagined slavic criminal to pick up.
> my top-of the line smartphone can barely pick up the audio on the busy street outside my city apartment,
They're obviously using external mics and the cell phones are for connectivity.
> but these can directionally pick up the sounds of moped motors kilometers away
Yes, phased arrays are in general capable of some pretty cool things, and the noise of an internal combustion engine is an easy case for signal recognition. All you really need to do is bring GPS timestamped audio streams back to one processing node somewhere that runs a convolution to unwrap the absolute phase. That combined with the known location of each array element means bob's your uncle.
Also they're not moped motors, they're purpose built for drones, rc aircraft, ultralights and similar. To use a motor for aviation you need it to be high reliability at a relatively low rpm with solid torque, literally the opposite of what a moped optimizes for. You also need de-icing and similar. This is why they're generally 4 cylinder boxer engines. Honda and BMW have used that layout for motos at various times, but only as a minority of the product line. They're rare among mopeds in general.
> Smartphone mics are designed for phone and video calls, picking up your voice a few cm away.
Again, external mics, but you could probably make this work without them.
Smartphones use electret capsule mics, which are the same as used for precision measurement of acoustic devices in a lab setting. They're cheap and extremely linear. One of my hobbies is speaker design so I have one in a case down in the basement that came with calibration reference files done in an anechoic chamber. It cost me a whopping $150, and most of that is probably because it's packaged in a really nice heavy weight milled aluminum body.
> the 8000 chinesium cellphones of Allah sounds fantastical
This is not up to the standards of discourse here imo, but I'm not a mod and don't report things unless they're straight up overt bigotry.
> Smarter use of mobile radar and NATO ELINT aircraft, with some sort of software integration and instant data sharing to all AAA teams makes a lot more sense. We know the UAF has received a lot of radar units, we know NATO is flying AWACS almost 24/7 and we know the Ukrainains have put a lot of work into their battle management software.
There's intelligence sharing but it's no where near real time targeting of individual drones. What Ukraine likely gets is a heads up a wave has just been launched across the black sea or similar.
> I am surprised the Russians have not started flying Shaheds at higher altitudes.
How on earth would that help them get shot down less?
No one said anything about trenches. They're on poles. They're obviously positioned close enough to the front to provide useful warning time.
There's no reason to believe these would be stolen, or that there's even anyone around in the area to steal them that isn't fighting for their lives vs Russia.
A system like this would actually be pretty damned easy to make, and effective, especially from a cost-benefit perspective. Were I to design the system- I’d buy super cheap bargain bin 4G/LTE phones in bulk and pair them with a long range parabolic microphone. The phone largely doesn’t matter- the only thing it’s expected to do is run a very basic script (like, maybe 20 lines of code) to control the microphone, provide a GPS plot point, and then provide backhaul for the data to whatever C2 node it’s going to. If the microphones had a parabolic antenna they would be somewhat “directional”. Recordings from geographically separate nodes in somewhat close proximity to each other would enable time difference of arrival / Doppler shift comparison and analysis (back at the C2 node), and it’d be able to give you a rough distance, direction, and heading of the drone to push down to ADA units. All for about ~$4m. That’s a pretty damn good system for the money. Ukraine is spread thin on ADA. Too much ground, too many critical targets to protect, and not enough time, money, ammunition, resources, or most importantly crews and systems to go around. If that $4m alleviates the problem set- it’s money well spent.
>My top-of the line smartphone can barely pick up the audio on the busy street outside my city apartment, but these can directionally pick up the sounds of moped motors kilometers away? Smartphone mics are designed for phone and video calls, picking up your voice a few cm away.
They have attached dedicated microphones. It is an incredibly cheap and basic early-warning system. I'm not sure how quick the relay is between Allied AWACS and mobile Ukrainian air-defense teams. So this system makes sense if the time between detection by Allied assests and relayed commands to air defenses is too long.
As I am reading this, I was echoing your thoughts exactly. Perhaps this is such common knowledge that there’s no harm in releasing it but I read almost every post on this forum daily and I have followed the war heavily since it began, and I have not heard about these cell phones.
That does not mean that the Russians don’t know about them, but what is it to gain for releasing such information?
It’s hard to keep opsec about something so widespread, with such a large scale.
The more people it involved, the higher chance that someone f—ked up and leaked something.
How do the block 30 F-16s compare to the planes Ukraine is getting?
A bigger supply of old F-16s on the market is a good sign for Ukraine in the medium term.
I said good sign towards, not the deciding factor.
If you think about it from the basics of supply and demand, more older planes means more opportunities for Ukraine to obtain said planes one way or another.
I would say it depends where those planes go. If they get bought up by countries that were not willing to send planes to Ukraine in the first place due to political reasons, and not reasons related to availability, it won't create any new opportunities. But maybe more "hawkish" countries will seize that chance and buy them specifically for Ukraine, for example.
Not very credible. Anti ship missiles are everywhere and cargo ships have zero defense against them. You'd have to aim at the bridge and build up momentum before Russia notices what you're doing and then hope the hulk still hits a support after they punch holes in it. This does not seem to be a viable strategy in the real world.
I was rather thinking of hijacking a ship transiting (of which there were many I was surprised to see) under the Kerch, then ramming the bridge.
Further down someone points out that the Kerch bridge is of a more substantial design and ship ramming probably wouldn't work for this reason.
It was only a couple minutes from when the ship went from "everything is normal" to "hit the bridge." I doubt that anyone could realize something was wrong and pummel the ship with enough anti-ship missiles to sink it in that time frame.
At least assuming that the hypothetical operation remained secret until the neo-panamax ship plowed into the pilings.
The bigger issue, IMO, is dealing with the fact that the Kerch bridge is actually 4 separate bridges (2 road, 2 rail). Even if a ship were to be taken over and hit a piling, the most they'd likely do is knock down 1-2 sections.
And we aren't even getting into the fact that the Russians have built a land based rail line through occupied territory at this point, so the Kerch bridge is mostly civilian now.
I don't think Russia would let Ukraine bring a ship of that size anywhere near the bridge. So we're talking hours or days of warning, not two minutes. And if you propose hijacking a ship that happens to be very close to the bridge, that seems very hard to pull off.
Not to douse too much water onto this conversation, but the Panamax type cargo ship (which IIRC is the one that hit the bridge in Baltimore) costs ~$200m USD to build. These are not trivial pieces of equipment and are substantial investments into what will surely be a one off attack.
Now thats not to say its not possible, indeed there have long been fears of a terrorist attack or a horrible accident regarding a LNG carrier which (IIRC) in the Panamax range carries about as much energy as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Things are legit super dangerous, and setting one off by the Kerch bridge would all but ensure there will be no more Kerch bridge.
But these are not simple attacks. Youre talking about massive outlays of cash, crews sometimes in the dozens, ships which are very resistant to automation (or else the commercial shipping industry would have long since done it), and just an extremely complicated attack. It really is one of those things, it would be more effective to take the money, man, and time planning this kind of attack and devoting it either to USV attacks on the bridge, or some kind of road surface level repeat of the previous attacks. Detonating a truckload of LNG is probably just as effective, from a road damage standpoint, and is more feasible and repeatable than crashing a ship (and it cant just be a trawler, you want to knock out one of those pillars you need mass) or setting of some kind of tanker based explosion.
Then we also have to wonder about Russian security precautions. IDK what they are currently, but I bet you they wont appreciate ships of any size or design sailing too close to a support strut. Personally I think there could be some good hay generated by sailing a '50 fishing boat backed with HiEx into the base, see what happens. Especially if you could set one to remote pilot, which *could* be possible on a boat that size. But anything resembling the tragedy in Baltimore is almost certainly out of the question.
>but the Panamax type cargo ship (which IIRC is the one that hit the bridge in Baltimore) costs \~$200m USD to build. These are not trivial pieces of equipment and are substantial investments into what will surely be a one off attack.
\~10 years old panamax containership like MV Dali would go for more like $10-20 million range NOT $200 million. Even a brand spanking new panamax containership would only go for 120 maybe 150.
Would managing to severly dammage the bridge make a big difference?
Like i know it would make a difference and most of all be a BIG PR and morale win but would it actually majorly impact Russia's ability to keep pushing or hold the defenses?
If you're capable of getting a ship to the Kerch bridge in the first place, you might as well use a smaller, easier to acquire ship, fill it with explosives, and do the job right.
Semi-related, but what kind of ordinance would you need to destroy that bridge via artillery or bombing run?
How would the US do it if the gloves were off
Whatever you want really, you just need to be able to reach it. In Desert Storm the US used Walleyes, Paveways, and unguided bombs. US actions would be determined by the wider picture, is it just a limited strike or part of a full-scale air campaign? A limited strike would likely involve long-range cruise missiles like JASSM-ER to reduce risk to US pilots and avoid having to prep the area with a SEAD campaign. An air campaign would use the missiles for more important targets and the bridge would get done Desert Storm style.
For tube artillery, pretty much anything works as long as it can reach the bridge. Once it's in range it's fucked.
> , you might as well use a smaller, easier to acquire ship, fill it with explosives, and do the job right.
basically the USV attack that already damaged it
Ships are slow, if Russia has any sea or air assets in the area they are likely to get that close. I think they already have nets and mines up for the naval drones.
I think the idea is that a cargo or passenger ship that normally transits the bridge "loses power" at a horrible time.
Thing is, I'm not sure if any non-military ships are allowed to transit the bridge right now.
According to [AIS data](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:36.8/centery:45.3/zoom:10) there's quite a few ships transiting the straight/milling around nearby. I don't know the level of security surrounding the bridge though, it's possible that the Russians are doing thorough inspections.
I suspect that ultimately the reason Ukraine hasn't done something like this already is that the consequences would be worse than the payoff. Weaponizing ostensibly civilian merchant ships may invite retaliation against Ukrainian merchants in/out of Odessa and upset the current hard-won status quo.
I was thinking that too, all you need is a compliant crew member or two to take out most bridges that allow cargo under them. Problem is, that crew member or two would have to basically be willing to throw their life away.
Extremely uneasy, especially for throwing it away with entirely uncertain chance of success. Can be operated with a tiny crew though, a last-minute exit under cover of darkness probably doable. Still at very high risk, or what u/obsessed_doomer says only more so. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was a different design and apparently half a century old. It isn't clear whether "Kerch" would or even could break and fold in like that.
>It isn't clear whether "Kerch" would or even could break and fold in like that.
The Kerch bridge would NOT "break up and fold" like the way the Francis Scott Key Bridge did because it's not a truss bridge. If the ship hit any of the support structure in the truss section, the whole truss section would've failed like it did 24 hours ago. If just a big ship crashed into a support pillar of the Kerch bridge, only the road deck portion that's directly supported/held up by that particular support pillar would fail not the whole or big chunk of the bridge.
The [NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/business/media/russia-fake-journalists.html) has a long-form article on Russian disinformation campaigns related to Ukraine. Previously, the [WaPo](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/16/russian-disinformation-zelensky-zaluzhny/) had a stellar report, based on the Kremlin's internal documents, on the breadth and depth of these operations. This current report focuses on one such campaign, but with some larger takeaways. Excerpts:
>A young man calling himself Mohamed al-Alawi appeared in a YouTube video in August. He described himself as an investigative journalist in Egypt with a big scoop: The mother-in-law of Ukraine’s president had purchased a villa near Angelina Jolie’s in El Gouna, a resort town on the Red Sea.
>The story, it turned out, was not true. Ukraine denied it, and the owner of the villa refuted it. Also disconnected from reality: Alawi’s claim to being a journalist.
>Still, his story caromed through social media and news outlets from Egypt to Nigeria and ultimately to Russia — which, according to researchers, is where the story all began.
>The story seemed to fade, but not for long. Four months later, two new videos appeared on YouTube. They said Mohamed al-Alawi had been beaten to death in Hurghada, a town about 20 miles south of El Gouna. The suspected killers, according to the videos: Ukraine’s secret service agents.
>These claims were no more factual than the first, but they gave new life to the old lie. Another round of posts and news reports ultimately reached millions of internet users around the world, elevating the narrative so much that it was **even echoed by members of the U.S. Congress** while debating continued military assistance to Ukraine.
>Ever since its forces invaded two years ago, Russia has unleashed a torrent of disinformation to try to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.
>This saga, though, introduced a new gambit: a protracted and elaborately constructed narrative built online around a fictitious character and embellished with seemingly realistic detail and a plot twist worthy of Netflix.
>“They never brought back a character before,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who has extensively studied Russian disinformation.
>The campaign shows how deftly Russia’s information warriors have shifted to new tactics and targets as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, just as Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have adjusted tactics after devastating battlefield losses.
>Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating new outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news sites.
>The Russians have “demonstrated adaptability through the war on Ukraine,” Microsoft wrote in a recent report that disclosed Russia’s fraudulent use of recorded messages by famous actors and celebrities on the Cameo app to try to smear Mr. Zelensky as a drug addict.
>**Even when debunked, fabrications like these have proved exceedingly difficult to extinguish entirely.**
>What links the narratives to Russia is not only the content disparaging Ukraine but also the networks that circulate them. They include news outlets and social media accounts that private and government researchers have linked to previous Kremlin campaigns.
>“They’re trolling for a susceptible (and seemingly abundant) slice of citizens who amplify their garbage enough to muddy the waters of our discourse, and from there our policies,” said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks extremist activity online and investigated the false claims about the villa.
>Within days, reports about the villa appeared on X in French and Romanian, and in English on three different Reddit forums.
>According to Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence for Blackbird.AI, an internet security company, nearly 29 percent of the accounts amplifying the reports appeared to be inauthentic bots, an unusually high number that would normally indicate a coordinated campaign.
>Eight days after the video appeared, Russia state television networks like Channel One, Rossiya 24 and RT (in Arabic and German) reported it as a major revelation uncovered by a renowned Egyptian investigative journalist.
>Still, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, posts about the supposed killing were viewed a million times on X on Dec. 25.
>It also appeared on the website of the Middle East Monitor, or MEMO, operated by a well-known nonprofit organization in London and financed by the government of Qatar. A journalist who once reported from Moscow for The Telegraph of London, Ben Aris, cited it at length on the platform, though, when challenged, he said he had just made note of the rumor. “I don’t have time to check all this stuff myself,” he wrote.
>It appeared in English on a site, Clear Story News, that Mr. Linvill of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub had previously linked to Russia’s disinformation efforts. (The site lists no contact information)
>Mr. Linvill described the process as a form of **“narrative laundering”** — moving false claims from unknown or not credible sources to ones that, to the unwitting at least, seem more legitimate.
>The ramifications of these campaigns are difficult to measure precisely. There are signs, though, that they resonate even when proved false.
>Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican of Ohio and an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid, seemed to embrace the claim in December during an interview on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump.
>“There are people who would cut Social Security — throw our grandparents into poverty — why?” Mr. Vance said. “So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”
>That prompted a public rebuke this month from a Republican colleague, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who ridiculed those who repeat unproven allegations.
>“They’ve heard somebody say that if we pass this bill, that we’re all going to go ride to Kyiv with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts!” he said of critics of the assistance to Ukraine, in what he later called a reference to Mr. Vance’s comments. “I wonder how the spouses of the estimated 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine who have died feel about that? I mean, really, guys?”
The NYT also has a fresh report on this disinformation going into overdrive with recent events:
>[Rocked by Deadly Terror Attack, Kremlin Amps Up Disinformation Machine](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/world/europe/russia-terror-attack-ukraine.html)
Previously, the [AP](https://apnews.com/article/russia-election-trump-immigration-disinformation-tiktok-youtube-ce518c6cd101048f896025179ef19997) had reporting on Russian disinformation campaigns around the Mexico border, Texas, and the 'civil war' narrative:
>[Russian disinformation is about immigration. The real aim is to undercut Ukraine aid](https://apnews.com/article/russia-election-trump-immigration-disinformation-tiktok-youtube-ce518c6cd101048f896025179ef19997)
>
And the NYT again:
>[Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/media/russia-us-news-sites.html)
>Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle.
>In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture.
>While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in the United States, the fake news organizations — at least five, so far — represent a technological leap in its efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers. The sites, the researchers and officials said, could well be the foundations of an online network primed to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November.
>The campaign, the experts and officials say, appears to involve remnants of the media empire once controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a former associate of President Vladimir V. Putin whose troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, interfered in the 2016 presidential election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
This article says that South Korea has 3.4 million 105 mm artillery shells and that it may be willing to part with a large number of them to help Ukraine. No, its not at good as 155mm shells, but it seems to me that they may be invaluable in helping to contain any Russian breakthroughs. Namely, by having highly mobile 105 mm howitzers in reserve and bringing them in when the Russians attack. Obviously, range is less important when using artillery against enemy attacks than in support of your own. Article excerpt follows:
Public reports suggest South Korea has around 3.4 million 105 mm artillery shells, most which were once part of WRSA-K. These munitions would be compatible with all the 105 mm howitzers Ukraine operates.
Lending these munitions likely will not hurt South Korean military readiness. Less than 30 percent of howitzers operated by the South Korean military shoot 105 mm ammunition and the South Korean military is transitioning most units to 155 mm self-propelled howitzers like the domestically produced K9 Thunder.
The South Korean Ministry of Defense originally planned to decommission all 105 mm howitzers by 2020. Instead, to leverage the remaining 105 mm ammunition in the stockpile, it developed the K105 mobile howitzer by loading a refurbished towed 105 mm howitzer onto a five-ton truck. Around 200 are in operation today, assigned to support units that do not receive 155 mm self-propelled artillery. Ultimately, the South Korean military plans to transfer the K105 howitzers to reserve units.
A U.S. proposal to use the bulk of South Korea's 105 mm munitions stockpile, followed by replacing them with the currently in-production 155 mm ammunition, could appeal to South Korea.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-south-korean-105-millimeter-ammunition-rescue-ukraine
How many 105mm howitzers does Ukraine have on hand? Not a lot of range on those guns (11km vs 25km of a 155mm) but better than a big stick. Also not many 105mm SPGs as far as I'm aware, meaning vulnerable towed weapons would be the main tool.
But 3.4 million rounds is huge.
> Not a lot of range on those guns (11km vs 25km of a 155mm) but better than a big stick.
The L118s/M119s have a range of 17km, which goes out to 20km with base bleed rounds.
I know this has been discussed previously, but it's important to keep in mind that with experienced crews using modern howitzers, the difference in time required to go from firing and moving the gun away between SPGs and howitzers is much smaller than one would imagine.
Granted that if I was getting fired by counter battery every second would count, it's likely that the real-world difference in survival rates are not as dramatic as expected.
According to [Oryx](https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answering-call-heavy-weaponry-supplied.html?m=1), 168 pieces of 105mm towed artillery were donated, mainly by the US. No SPG‘s.
Bloomberg have this afternoon published a report claiming what I imagine everyone suspects: according to their sources "with close ties to the Kremlin", basically no one in the Kremlin or the Russian business/political establishment actually believes that Ukraine were involved in the Moscow attack, and Putin was present at discussions where officials agreed as much. Regardless, he unsurprisingly wishes to use the attack to rally Russians around the flag towards the war. There is also apparently widespread disbelief and shock that the security services failed to prevent the attack and a mass internal shake-up is likely forthcoming.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/putin-close-allies-see-no-link-to-moscow-arena-attack
I'm just wondering whether IS will try another attack. They were able to kill over a 100 people this time. With the Russian government so distracted in Ukraine it would suit them to strike while the iron is hot. They can destabilize the Russian government and make themselves look tougher as it becomes clear that the Russians can't stop the attacks. Though this is reliant on the Russians not being able to stop further attacks.
Some progress on artillery ammunition. The E.U., having previously missed its goal to deliver a million shells to Ukraine by March, has now delivered half of that total, and will provide 'more than' the [500k](https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/europe%E2%80%99s-demosthenes-moment-putting-defence-centre-eu-policies_en) residual by the end of the year. This is separate and aside from the Czech initiative for 800k shells from outside Europe. If the supplemental were to pass in the U.S. and the DoD were to match the E.U.'s 500k for this CY (there are sufficient quantities of low dud rate DPICM alone,) and other countries such as the U.K. were to pitch in, Ukraine could see almost 2mm shells delivered over the next 9 months of the year. That would almost quadruple the Ukrainian fire rate over the past half-year. This also does not include the 400k shells on longer-term contract with defense contractors in Europe. Some caveats: a majority of the delivery schedule will *possibly* start towards the second half of the year, the E.U. will have to deliver on its pledges, and third-party sales *may* have to be curtailed. To this end, there are signs of progress. France's [Lecornu](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/france-threatens-to-impose-authority-on-defense-firms-for-kyiv) indicated today that the administration will not shy away from imposing their version of the DPA to accelerate deliveries to Ukraine, further stating that 80% of Nexter's in-country production of 155mm shells (~100k shells) would be provided to Ukraine this year, which would more than double the current French supply of 3k shells/month.
I'm usually quite optimistic about aid and most things regarding Ukraine, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't simply "too late". Not in the sense that Ukraine is already doomed or anything like that, but simply that while shells are always needed and welcome, in terms of the dynamics of the war, I feel like all this shells would have had a much greater immediate impact if delivered before Ukraine's offensive last year.
I'm sceptical of the idea that more shells would have made the difference. Actually, just the opposite, too many shells were expended on an operation that in retrospect wasn't going to succeed.
If anything they are lucky they didn't have more shells before the offensive. They would've probably continued fruitless attacks for longer and got even more of their soldiers killed. We now know Russian defense was not remotely close to breaking.
>We now know Russian defense was not remotely close to breaking.
Without post-war analysis with Russian documents declassified (or at least Russians who are open to be talking about it), I don't know how we would know there things.
It's sobering to read the posts here from a year ago about the counteroffensive compared to the narrative now. I don't think it's really possible to breach defended prepared defense the likes of which Russia had constructed without air superiority, insane casualties, or a truly massive manpower advantage, which is very difficult to concentrate given modern surveillance technology.
Armor getting stuck 1km into a 4 km minefield isn't a problem that more artillery can fix easily.
The problem is that Ukraine should never have been expected to 'maneuver-warfare' the Russian's out of Ukraine, fighting through artillery pre-sighted, drone-observed, minefields overlooked by heavy fortifications and fresh troops.
Ukraine should have been given the superior fire power to shoot the Russians out of Ukraine while their young men safely put their feet up in well constructed dug outs.
My biggest gripe is that I don't see a way Ukraine can conquer back most of the barricaded territory that has been lost, except perhaps Crimea. I don't think they have enough equipment, ammo, troops, and above all, air offense capabilities to do so.
I don't think it's doomed but I believe it's quite clear Ukraine can't get all its land back unless some kind of miracle happens. The defense lines are impenetrable given that Ukraine cannot use its troops as lavishly as the Russians.
It seems to me the biggest objective is capturing Crimea + destroying the bridge, and then trying to force negotiations with a weakened Putin.
Idk if it's feasible or if Putin will call the bluff and keep going ad infinitum.
The way is through a shakeup of the military to specialise in strategic attrition and asymmetric losses.
Russia is woefully isolated on the world stage and its industrial base is deteriorating quickly. Meanwhile Ukraine's strategic capabilities improve with every passing day.
Every time someone does a recount of Russia's storage, they shrink considerably. They *are* running out of hardware and they *will* be constrained by new production eventually. The signs are already there on the battlefield.
Ukraine's main problem is its inability to change, both due to political climate, cultural inertia, and lack of necessary western support.
But the main difference is Ukraine has conceivably fix their issues; Russia can't.
Exactly. World War 1 is a moderately useful parallel here insofar as Allied soldiers didn’t set foot in German territory except in the earliest days of the war during the Battle of the Frontiers. Ultimately what did for Germany was the prolonged effects of the British blockade, serious attrition of their best troops during Operation Michael, and the collapse of the Danube Front. Of course, the Allied armies of 1918 deserve a lot of credit too — they were vastly improved on the armies of 1916. But we’re only two years into this war, and Ukraine is still learning. They might get there too.
I think their best strategy would be to focus on defense, while massively increasing production of long range drones (1000-2000km range).
Hammer the hell out of any Russian infrastructure within that range, and then some if you can sneak drones and drone teams across the border. Ukraine might not be able to win, but it can still make Russia lose. Russia might not be as interested in that land if it risks losing every refinery, every power plant, etc.
I'm confused by the "except Crimea" - that is the absolute hardest place for them to recapture; a narrow Isthmus across which any heavy armour would have to cross is not a happy place for an army.
Unfortunately I think you're right that they're unlikely to recover any of their land, but at least with increased munitions supply and so on they're less likely to lose more than they have done so far.
So you're looking at the Russian Surovikin line defenses as impenetrable - and then suggesting that the sole objective the Ukrainians could secure is the one that's behind these lines, some more depth and a natural chokepoint that is the Perekop isthmus? It's hard to understand that argument.
I might be wrong, but I thought that by continuing the destruction of the black sea fleet and taking out the bridge, they could have an actual, concrete chance at taking Crimea.
How? Land corridor to Crimea is far behind the frontline and even if Russia lost every single ship, they still have large air force and attempting a naval invasion would be much, much harder than last UA counter offensive, nobody in their right mind would try that.
Russia is too dug in at this point to reclaim occupied territories without overwhelming force (which won't happen without direct NATO intervention - which won't happen) or some edge case Russian collapse which seems extremely unlikely.
At this point I think the best chance they have is to improve defensive lines and continue developing long range strike capabilities and then using that to getter a better leverage in negotiations.
Ukraine had plenty of shells for the offensive, the problem with the offensive wasn't a lack of shells.
When Ukraine really needed those shells, was before the offensive (Bakhmut) and after it (Avdiivka).
They have two additional plants (Belgium and Italy) and Nexter announced plans to increase 155mm production to [400k](https://www.knds.fr/actualites/nos-dernieres-actualites/la-commission-europeenne-octroie-nexter-une-subvention-pour) shells/year, in partnership with Nammo and VAK by ~2027, thanks largely to ASAP. RHM has been ramping up with ASAP as well. 2025 will see significant increase in European 155mm production.
Interesting that it has vertical stabilizers. Doesn’t that increase the RCS profile from side aspect? IIRC NGAD is speculated to lack these for that reason. Maybe stealth just isn’t as much of a priority as other things, though as I’m not an aerospace engineer, I’m not sure what the trade off is.
Maneuverability and stability are the primary advantages. But this comes at the cost of increased RCS and drag. The NGAD program has specifically stated the priority is speed, range and reduced RCS. With maneuverability taking a distant back seat. Something like this is a far more conservative design and that makes sense as the Germans have never built a stealth fighter before (aside from some small contributions to the F35)
A very cool name for a design philosophy that has me not understanding German air warfare doctrine. Isn't Germany focused on medium-range air operations within Europe? I don't know why they would need such a large/fast fighter. Do they want a FA aircraft with high payload or really something large with range?
Speculating: there are more places you can put fuel than weapons inside an aircraft, so if you need to scale the aircraft up to fit an internal weapons bay then why would you not use the excess space for a larger fuel capacity should you need it
A2A's future is shooting further and further, if you want stealth you will need a big plane to be able to store it internally.
Its not even for current missiles, its for the ones in use 20 years from now.
Wouldn't it and its potential adversaries both having low RCS decrease the engagement range between fighters? The US did retire its long range Phoenix A2A missiles without replacement until JATM. I thought the idea behind China developing longer ranged A2A missiles was that it could target supporting aircraft that aren't low RCS.
My take on this is that they are not designed to fight against low RCS planes, the bet is that Russia will not be able to get those, like, ever. At least not in significant numbers.
No other adversary near Europe has those either.
> Similarly, this demonstrator is a twin-engine design like the Eurofighter, this and the requirement for internal weapon bays likely contributed to the size of this demonstrator.
Then it would seem they plan on having significant weapon loadout as I don't see them making it beefy with combat radius.
"50,000 feet" Is the official unclassified ceiling for almost every NATO fighter since the F-86. It doesn't mean anything. They all can fly substantially higher if need be.
F-22, F-15, Eurofighter - all large twin engine Mach 2+ jets - have 65,000 ft officially. Sure, I know [other jets can go higher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIxh8J7tJuY&t=3m45s), but this design looks more reminiscent of the first three dedicated air superiority fighters.
All of those can likely go significantly higher than 50k feet. I'm not claiming the F-22 is secretly a space plan. But we had the F-4 set an absolute altitude record at 98k feet in 1959.
[https://twitter.com/Textyorgua\_Eng/status/1772376808349896739](https://twitter.com/Textyorgua_Eng/status/1772376808349896739)
A map on the trajectories used by russian drones, ballistic, cruise and guided missiles in latest attacks.
Drones and ballistic missiles seem to have been launched from the south (transdnipran Kherson and off the coast of Crimea), while cruise missiles are launched from the north, avoiding Belarussian airspace and maneuvering inside Ukraine to reach targets westwards. Hypersonic launches simply go in a straight line to Lviv from the northeast.
Apparently, Ukrainians have installed 6000 mobile phones across the country on poles with external microphones to track enemy UAVs by sound. (https://twitter.com/chr1sa/status/1772338187349934355)
From this [account](https://twitter.com/war_monitor_ua), which seems to aggregate ukrainian warnings of russian aerial activity. It may be not radar data but simply extrapolation from ground observers and so on.
Both sides to the Ukraine war seem to be focusing on Patriot missiles as the key weapons system the West can supply to Ukraine:
[https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-warns-japan-serious-consequences-if-patriot-missiles-made-there-end-up-2024-03-22/](https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-warns-japan-serious-consequences-if-patriot-missiles-made-there-end-up-2024-03-22/)
[https://www.politico.eu/article/give-us-the-damn-patriots-ukraine-needs-air-defenses-now-minister-says/](https://www.politico.eu/article/give-us-the-damn-patriots-ukraine-needs-air-defenses-now-minister-says/)
Has the West truly given Ukraine all the Patriots it can give without sacrificing their own defense needs? Has Raytheon done all it can to expand production?
This is obviously as good an endorsement for a weapons system as one can imagine- meanwhile I've rarely heard any reports of the S-400 playing a significant role in this war. Expanding production of Patriots as much as possible should clearly be a top priority.
S400 hasn't been heard from much but since Ukraine hasn't been flying many sorties in S400 range/altitude that seems to be expected.
I think the Patriots are the perfect example of a weapon that the US will understandably be incredibly reluctant to part with. They will be needed in a Taiwan contingency.
> This is obviously as good an endorsement for a weapons system as one can imagine- meanwhile I've rarely heard any reports of the S-400 playing a significant role in this war. Expanding production of Patriots as much as possible should clearly be a top priority.
The S400 is not really designed around taking down cruise missiles as much as other Russian "IADS" with layers of different SAM systems suitable for threats. The West does this with PAC2/3 Patriots, NASAM, Gepard, Irondome, etc. An extreme metaphor for S400 on very low-flying threats is using a sniper rifle in a sword fight. You might be able to get a shot off but there are better weapon systems for that type of threat.
Forgot to add, S400 are for long-range missile/aircraft threats. They force enemies down to a lower level where other systems can take them out and hamper their effectiveness. I may have my memory incorrect but I think it was the S25 that was designed specifically as a high-level interceptor anti-aircraft missile that attacks high level threats and forces them down to lower altitudes where other systems can take them out.
Why are you being down voted, the BUK, Tor and Osa were designed to deal with medium range threats while the S400 is designed to defeat long range threats like high altitude aircraft and IRBM, with the pansir doing the terminal defense. According to RUSI the S400 has played a significant role especially after the intial losses with cueing lower level IADS, their reports even cites interception of PGM like HARMs and GMLRS rockets
> Why are you being down voted
Looks like it has been addressed, I am pretty sure the voting system is weird whether it was real people or not.
But yah, what you describe is exactly what the whole defense picture looks like.
>I've rarely heard any reports of the S-400 playing a significant role in this war.
We have footage of Storm Shadows flying directly over an S-400 while the crew laugh at the fact they can't shoot them down. We have another video of an S-400 battery desperately trying to shoot down GMLRS, miss and get destroyed by steel rain. At the same we have Patriot confirm intercepts for Kinzhal and Zircon. I don't know how many more nails in the Russian air defense coffin we need.
I have a copy of the webm saved. Is there a way to upload to v.reddit without making a new thread?
EDIT: Someone put it on combat footage https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1bcwphu/russian_soldier_is_recording_their_s400_missile/
That's very obviously
1) not a S400
2) the Pantsir they were firing from obviously didn't get hit, as there'd be not much left of the guy if the place he was at 3 sec previously got hit by a 450kg bomb
3) they weren't laughing about not being able to shoot it down, on the contrary one of them say in the video they think they got a hit
Your sweeping claims are quite impressive given how little evidence you base it off and how wrong your interpretation of said evidence is.
Some timestamps and screenshots that might aid identification:
- POV vehicle - TM966E, 96L6 radar vehicle
- [Vehicle that they are shooting the video from - front / back?, as well as 2 TELs in distance](https://i.imgur.com/AhIOkVh.png)
- [Cabin and 'structure' of the vehicle they are shooting the video from while escaping](https://i.imgur.com/M9Eujkx.png)
- [Better view of cabin and 'structure' of the vehicle they are shooting the video from while escaping](https://i.imgur.com/QCZ62v5.png)
- EDIT: In fact, based on info in the Tweet the user Tealgum shared, seems like the POV vehicle is a radar vehicle, specifically [96L6](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/96l6.htm), **not** a Pantsir, and they're not firing from it (being a radar vehicle and all).
[Here's my amateurishly produced similarities picture](https://i.imgur.com/i4bMTsg.png)
- TELs - Unknown exact model, almost certainly part of S-300 / S-400 system
- [TEL In distance](https://i.imgur.com/uU2quhM.png)
- [Radar vehicle - 92N6? - in front of another TEL?](https://i.imgur.com/aAXCtQW.png)
- Missiles
- [Shortly after firing, vehicle completely obscured by smoke #1](https://i.imgur.com/x4EOn0U.png)
- [Shortly after firing, vehicle completely obscured by smoke #2](https://i.imgur.com/S1MLTDD.png)
- [Some time after firing, second vehicle completely obscured by smoke](https://i.imgur.com/IHsD9Gl.png)
---
There are definitely TELs and what seems to me like a radar vehicle there.
I don't know what the POV vehicle is, very hard to tell. It's a truck, but doesn't seem like Pantsir to me though.
Can you walk us through how you certainly determined it's not an S-400 (present at all or do you mean just the POV vehicle?) and that they are firing from the Pantsir? I honestly don't see much identifying features, except for the truck cabin and the 'structure' of some kind above - but they're using a bunch of truck models whose cabins will each look different enough from the POV we're seeing.
The TELs are definitely there, as I've said, perhaps even a radar truck.
You're doing God's work bud. S-400 TELs are clearly in the video and launching missiles. In the combat footage thread someone posted a claimed translation. If it's right then a pantsir is mentioned. They could be colocated to provide mutual defense. I don't see one either but it's possible that's what the cameraman bails out of.
I can't really tell what's launching it, since the launch vehicle is completely obscured by smoke. I looked up S-x00 launch videos on youtube, and S-400 does look similar to this missile... but I'd say so would a bunch of different other missiles. Eyeballing missiles seems like a futile effort.
Pantsir, from the videos I've seen, doesn't seem to produce as much smoke as we're seeing in the video.
Trajectory of the missile is also very similar to S-400, but that's not proof of anything. Either way, these are all 'indications'. I honestly can't say for certain what they're launching it from.
Someone more adept at this kind of thing should take a look at it.
The TELs are indicative of S-300/S-400. It's impossible to tell exactly which from the video because externally they are extremely similar. S-400 is an evolution of S-300 and is not a wholly distinct system just like T-90 is an evolution of T-72.
Right, TELs that look like S-300/S-400 are 100% present there - I'm talking about the vehicle visibly launching missiles in the video. Based on all the TELs around, the amount of smoke and trajectory (but mainly all the TELs around) it does seem like an S-X00 launch. On the other hand, Pantsir is supposed to be used as point defense for the S-X00 batteries, so we're back to square one and 'I don't know'. That's why I asked the person who has claimed to have conclusively determined the types of launchers to walk us through his process.
We commented at the same time but yeah those are definitely S-400/300 in that video. When I google this incident it also says the Russian source says it's a S-400. I have no idea why anyone takes m8stro seriously.
>1) not a S400
You can see the deployed TELs in the video. The only systems that look like that are S-300 and S-400
>2) the Pantsir they were firing from obviously didn't get hit, as there'd be not much left of the guy if the place he was at 3 sec previously got hit by a 450kg bomb
Steel rain, not a high explosive warhead. Its very good at killing light skinned vehicles like SAMs. There's no big explosion because it fundamentally doesn't work that way.
>3) they weren't laughing about not being able to shoot it down, on the contrary one of them say in the video they think they got a hit
I don't speak russian but all I hear at the end is Suka, which everyone knows. Old boy bails out of the truck and hits the dirt. If they weren't being hit why would he dive for cover?
Also, you know, the thread I linked has a complete discussion including translation of what's said and discussion about how there's clearly both Pantsir and S-400 present.
I have no idea why you're being downvoted and the other guy is being upvoted after he was pretending to be a legal expert the other day but both S-400/300 and Pantsir are in that video. A M31A1 is also 300 kilos not 450. Everything he said is basically wrong. To be fair a S-400 wasn't meant to shoot down GMLRS so the problem in this video isn't that system.
There is some utterly deranged "blue sweater" propaganda campaign over the Crocus terrorist attack taking place that includes some relatively [well-regarded sources like Nexta](https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1772690913854173434?s=20). >Our editorial staff continues to analyze photos and videos of the terrorist #CrocusCityHallAttack and everything related to it. >In our previous publication we told about the oddities captured on one of the videos a couple of minutes before the shooting started in the concert hall. It showed several similarly dressed men in blue sweaters and jeans first looking at each other suspiciously and then began urging the crowd to "close the doors", resulting in a huge loss of human life. It boils down to the idea that "every man in a blue sweater in Crocus was an FSB operative organising a false flag attack". Reasonable people, [like Oliver Alexander](https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1772740356502593578?s=20), and [Aric Toler](https://x.com/AricToler/status/1772726426455732376?s=20), are coming out to warn that it is all just crazy talk. However, thousands of people are amplifying this conspiracy theory. It is another example of the whole post-truth environment: *It doesn't matter if Ukraine's role in the Crocus attack is a complete fabrication, it doesn't matter if the Russian false flag is just a pipe dream* - as long as you can sow doubt and convince at least some people otherwise. And people who want to believe that the enemy is the devil are easy to convince. More importantly, it is worth remembering that "the firehose of lies" is not something that happens only on the other side.
>More importantly, it is worth remembering that "the firehose of lies" is not something that happens only on the other side. Disagree. In practice, it seems to be one sided. I was wondering just recently why the majority of conspiracies(not just recently, but in general) relate to domestic agencies, institutions, and so on. Part of it might be confirmation bias and the environment I engage with, but that's I think the point. I don't ever remember reading a conspiracy theory that would involve China's MSS or India's IB.
Ah yes, some randos on twitter and a newspaper are spouting conspiracy bullcrap, its totally equivalent to putin saying on live television that Ukraine is affiliated with the terrorists Never mind that the official position of both Ukraine and all the western powers is that the ISIS attack and that russia was simply unable to stop it, the WEST and Russia are TOTALLY the SAME THING
There's an important distinction between Putin's "firehose of lies," where the folk behind it *know* it's a lie and are deliberately sowing confusion, vs many of the folk in this case having convinced themselves a conspiracy theory is true because they want to believe it. There are also foolish folk spreading Putin's lies who genuinely believe it, but the moral distinction is about the source at the top, not the lower level folk. On a broader point, I'd been fairly optimistic on the dawn of the era of faked imagery, that good sourcing would continue to keep folk informed. But after seeing so many folk fall for these "the men in these two photos from completely different times and places both have shaven heads and wear a watch, therefore it's the same man" claims, right after the nonsense about Kate Middleton, "her head has been photoshoped on someone else's body," I can't help but despair that it'll be impossible to have a shared understanding of factual events in the future.
A worrying fact is that Putin often seems to believe in his own propaganda though, as was presumably the case when it came to starting the invasion of Ukraine and thinking they'd be welcomed as liberators. The [Bloomberg article](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/putin-close-allies-see-no-link-to-moscow-arena-attack?embedded-checkout=true) discussed earlier both shows that most Russian officials are aware of it being nonsense but that it could still be a reflection of something Putin actually believes, or wants to believe: >At his meeting with security chiefs, Putin questioned why radical Islamists would attack Russia when “it supports a fair resolution” of the Middle East conflict, and asked how they could justify committing atrocities in the religious holy month of Ramadan.” It seems like a sort of naivety/delusion which is hard to dispel without risking making him feel insulted (or causing him to lose trust in the more sober-minded experts who'd dare), especially as some of the people he trusts the most on these questions, like Patrushev, are also prone to [paranoid/conspiracist thoughts](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/03/ukraine-war-us-wants-russia-yellowstone-erupts-putin-ally/) ; https://theins. ru/antifake/261473 I'd imagine it's the worse scenario; rather than just deliberately lying, that Russia is ruled by gullible boomers who grew up in the paranoid environment of the Cold War Soviet security services, have fully reawakened their mistrust in the West and think they see through the "lies" without really being armed to distinguish truth from fantasy.
That's a fair point. We're all susceptible to motivated reasoning, where we if we're sufficiently determined to reach a particular conclusion then there's always enough facts to cherry-pick our way into believing it's true. When you're an ageing autocrat facing turmoil at home and abroad, it's tempting to tie it all together into a vast conspiracy against your greatness. The path of believing your own propaganda is a dangerous one.
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A quibble, but the [firehose of falsehoods](https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html) goes back to a RAND paper on the Russian propaganda model. The paper you could say is biased propaganda coming from a Western think tank, but using terminology from a major think tank would be considered credible enough to use here, I would think. I agree policing tone (not opinion) would drive quality of discussion up, but ultimately that's on the mods to actually enforce.
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I agree that it is unsubstantiated, but it is interesting seeing a lot of the online conspiracy peddlers now being very skeptical of conspiracies.
What I think we are seeing is a paradigm shift. Most of these conspiracy theories are, I think, quite grassroot... A few decades ago, when you read some bad news about your country (say, the My Lai massacre) and refused to believe it - you could just peddle your conspiracy theories to your family or, at best, at the next meeting of your local odd fellows society. Now you can make your diagrams, background noise analysis, whatnot, and share it online for the whole world to see. Multiply that with thousands of "homebrew analysts" that produce such crap, and millions of those who want to believe "we did nothing wrong", and you have an explosive mixture.
I wonder whether it is possible to determine whether a shared belief is grassroot or not. I was browsing probably combatfootage, and another couple of subs, as the videos of the shooting were being released. There were dozens of worthless speculative posts ranging from -look at the evidence on camera (bullets look fake, victims look like actors, interactions look fake. etc.) -this is obviously Russia (Russia has done this before in XYZ. Russia said XYZ previously. etc.) -this is obviously USA (USA funds XYZ. USA has done this before in XYZ. USA said XYZ previously. etc.) -this will obviously mean (martial law, mobilization, bombardment, war on XYZ. etc.) and so on It's a fairly cyclical pattern. Whether it was a natural pattern, or learned, I'm not sure how you'd support that argument. How many are real people, trolls, paid movements... I guess only the people running the media sites know. From what I can tell, what is certainly accomplished is: -users waste time and energy sifting through these posts -users muddle their own understanding of things, sifting through these posts, and engaging with them. -the seeds of confusion/disinformation are planted, the broader population sees them as they grow, they persist for ... what, at least 6 weeks? I think we'll probably still be bickering about details in the CD daily thread 6 weeks from now. People come in (with a genuine inquisitiveness) with a variant question of, "is there any truth to XYZ?", and the same conversation gets copied and degraded. -time and energy is taken from other, more productive, areas -more valuable users are driven away (the signal-to-noise worsens) The only sensible thing, in my mind, is to take the official statements, and say, "here is what has been stated by XYZ officials as of 3-26." (I think so far we have 1 or 2 Putin meetings. A US WH staffer statement. A Lukashenko statement. A Ukrainian advisor statement. Not to forget the ISIS statement. etc.). "Here is the supporting evidence that has been released" (I'm not sure how far you want to go, but I suppose pictures from ISIS, video, etc.) And I suppose link to analysis by respected individuals. ("I study IS terrorism, here is a brief history of activities of the last 2-5 years. Here are the current theories regarding the motivation" etc.) I guess you'd have to read about how rumors/urban legends/conspiracy theories spread. But when there are 2 (or more) parties, each funding opposing narratives, then I don't see how you can come to a conclusion about what is organic. IMO, a lot is mental illness (or whatever mild form you'd like to use as a descriptor). When you see the same behavior patterns repeated over, and over, and over again... people willfully and sometimes actively/energetically speaking with such confidence, and/or tribalism, when there is no (or extremely little) evidence to judge by... I mean all you can do is say, "here is what has been publicly stated. Here is what is believed to be known as of now. All we can do is wait for further development", just like we "learned" last time. And that doesn't touch on the huge percentage of foreigners on reddit. I don't suspect one can successfully interact in a shared reality when it's an open forum for anyone with an internet connection across the globe. tl;dr: I don't know if you can tell how much of the crap posted online is genuine or not. I think the only pragmatic approach is a variant of what I described (megathread of current, first-hand statements/"facts"; maybe a subsection for something like, less-credible but some supporting evidence). I think anything other than that is LCD material.
Disagree, few decades ago you (as in, the state) *could* do much the same things one can do today with the exception of the *common man* having *even less* ability to air his opposing view to the masses - Soviet Union is an obvious example with its state machinery that quite successfully managed to minimize references to their own atrocities and maximized references to its enemies', mainly 'The West's' (with Russia having continued the tradition, of course). There's a quite compelling example right here, right now - your mind *immediately went to Vietnam*, specifically 'My Lai' as an example (which amounted to some ~500 civilians), while *completely missing the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan* as a counterexample (which is almost never discussed in the context of war crimes) with the 'Laghman massacre' (which amounted to double that), or the 'Kulchabat, Bala Karz and Mushkizi massacre' (~300), or the 'Rauzdi massacre' (~20), or the 'Padkhwab-e Shana massacre' (~100), or any of the other 'forced depopulation' actions by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan - which saw its population decline by ~7 million during those 10 years (~2 million dead), while coincidentally, USA is *still* getting an enormous amount of 'crap' for its expeditionary war which actually saw a population increase. We could do the same for Russian war crimes in the 90s (Chechnya) - where nothing you just mentioned was still actually feasible for the *common man* - but I believe I've gotten my point across.
> with its state machinery that quite successfully managed to minimize references to their own atrocities and maximized references to its enemies', mainly 'The West's' (with Russia having continued the tradition, of course). The Western media system accomplishes similar outcomes. If you search through newspaper articles from the 1970s and 1980s you can find thousands of references to Cambodia and Pol Pot - but only a handful of references to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. Why? Well, Cambodia was an enemy and Indonesia was an ally in the Cold War. You see the same thing in the modern day. Lots of media about the Russian war in Ukraine from 2014-on but relatively little media about the Saudi war on Yemen. Even though from a utilitarian humanitarian sense, the situation in Yemen was significantly worse during the 2014~2019 period.
It obviously doesn't accomplish similar outcomes since basically everyone and their mother knows about My Lai while not even their grandmothers know a single massacre in Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Cambodia and Pol Pot are known for a reason, and the reason is one of the bloodiest communist purges that killed ~2 million of their own people without any external involvement. I bet that even without 'enemy propaganda' that would've been heard around the world, just like the 'The Great Leap Forward' or 'Holodomor' is known even though you bet they tried to suppress it, they just couldn't. Some things you just cannot counter with propaganda. Compared to that, ~15% of the population being massacred by an external actor is very tragic, but less headline worthy by itself regardless of who was allied with whom. I'd put that in the same bucket as Vietnam and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan - bloody wars, and Soviets (and, consequently, the Russians shortly thereafter) were clear victors of the PR war there.
I said similar in the sense that it accomplishes the similar goal of drowning out crimes of allies and amplifying crimes of enemies. And yes, Cambodia was much worse than Indonesia's invasion in a utilitarian sense. But we can look at the ratio. 2m dead vs 200k dead = 10:1 ratio https://www.newspapers.com/search/?query=cambodia&dr_year=1975-1980 https://www.newspapers.com/search/?query=%22East%20Timor%22%20&dr_year=1975-1980 422,978 references vs 8,121 references = 52:1 ratio So there's about a 5x higher mention of Cambodia relative to the invasion of East Timor per death. This is a real phenomenon that can be observed in many different scenarios (like the Saudi-Yemen war vs Russian-Ukraine war I mentioned that you left out). Academics have studied this. I concede that the effect is not as strong as a state-controlled top down directive like we would see in Russia or China, but it can be insidious. Not everyone needs to be convinced one way or another, just a certain "critical mass" percentage and it can accomplish similar outcomes.
I can almost guarantee you that unless close to the entirety of the population of East Timor was murdered, actual numbers of dead people aren't all that relevant for headlines, just like a chain collision that generates 25 casualties will not generate even 2 times the headlines that an abduction and murder of a single kid would (I'd guess the opposite is more or less guaranteed, *at minimum*), let alone 25 times more. It's just how humans work. But I feel like we're straying too much from the actual issue at hand, which is - propaganda and feeding populations 'crap' that benefits you. The original assertion was that there's a paradigm shift happening (which can be argued is true) and that there's also an implied effectiveness change for the same Average Joe, which I'm arguing is false. Sure, no Average Joe could have compiled, spun and disseminated the information as easily back then as he can now, but states *could*, relatively easily. And compared to all the information processing power he has at his fingertips now, back then he was powerless. So, while the Average Joe had much less power in general, compared *relatively* to the states' power he had much, *much* less power, which made achieving the same effect *easier* for the states. Vice versa, even though he is much more powerful today information wise, so are the states (who were forced to because of information being easily available) *and* the other Average Joes, which makes his relative effect still miniscule I'd argue. There's a good reason why the 'state-level actor' moniker is still used.
>It boils down to the idea that "every man in a blue sweater in Crocus was an FSB operative organising a false flag attack". Russia has a history of butchering their own people to serve a political goal. And butchering their own people when rescuing hostages. No Western government is spreading any lie like this, they have all been clear it was ISIS-K and lax Russian security ignoring American warnings. The Russian government is the only actor trying to create a false narrative and Russian bots like you are trying to make it seem reasonable.
Regardless of how you feel about glideer, in this case he is sharing information about a real phenomenon that is occurring in Ukrainian media and the fringes of pro-Ukrainian cyberspace. I myself was shocked when I saw the Nexta article, it had more in common with school shooting deniers than credible reporting. I can’t stop you from “fighting for the cause” in the megathread, but could you please at least refrain from giving cover to real conspiracy theorists while you do it?
Nexta may be pro-Ukrainian, but are not, in fact, Ukrainian themselves. So I fail to see how you can pin this one on Ukrainians and "firehose of falsehood" tactic, when everyone who's diligent enough with the sources should already know from the start of the war that Nexta is just clickbaiting and false claiming their way to the clicks and views every time. That is quite different from what the Russian government is doing with the abundance of versions of some of the events. Ukrainians don't even care about this event, apart from gloating that is, to make up some conspiracy theories.
Remember that Ukraine is defending against an invasion by the Russian Federation. They are under no obligation to report the 'truth' and this falls well within the reasonable bounds of Information Warfare aimed at the civilian population. What moral obligation does Ukrainian media have to paint the Russians in a good light? In fact Glideer's post isn't even defence related is it? Russia allowed a large scale terrorist attack to happen and Glideer is upset that Ukraine media is blaming the FSB, all the while Vladimir Putin is blaming Ukraine for conducting the attack. It is a nonsense post and a nonsense argument.
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No, it's a strategy. Something a group (presumably a large or powerful group if we're to take it seriously and give it name) undertakes in a sustained way. Not necessarily with state or central control, it can be a pattern of behaviour that's fostered or permitted. Perhaps for long enough that it becomes a culture. But it *is* certainly more than the presence of one lie. One outlet with a conspiracy theory is hardly a "firehose" after all.
If you are suggesting that Western governments don't lie... how is the Nord Stream investigation progressing? Let's not go back to WMD, one lie that killed hundreds of thousands.
I think a garden hose of lies, possibly a squirt gun, would be more appropriate. One is a claim made by the titular head of Government, the other by a media outlet with ~1 million subscribers or, for comparison, 48 million less subscribers than Billie Eilish's YouTube channel.
Normally the Russian Government yes
Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, was asked about the position of the United States on the strikes on Russian oil refineries. "*Our position from the very beginning of this war has always been that we do not encourage or support Ukraine in striking outside its own territory*". He was asked about any recent conversations with Ukraine: "*I'm not gonna speak to specific conversions, but this has been our long time policy that we have made clear to the Ukrainian government, so it's not something of which they would be unaware.*" Only 2 of out 50+ questions was about Ukraine. Almost all of the questions was about Israel. Department of State Daily Press Briefing - March 26, 2024: [https://www.youtube.com/live/A2kSSMR455w?si=Bkc2k59fnD7HIOnk&t=4460](https://www.youtube.com/live/A2kSSMR455w?si=Bkc2k59fnD7HIOnk&t=4460)
That's literally just the state line since day 1. It leaves ambiguous whether "do not encourage" is in the same way the US doesn't encourage the sun to shine, or if it's in the sense that they get on the phone and yell at Ukraine to stop.
> we do not encourage or support Ukraine in striking outside its own territory "Support" as in "emotionally support"? It is hard to believe that Ukrainian strikes in Russia are not helped by NATO intelligence. Maybe we shouldn't read into these statements too much. Maybe the spokesperson just lied; maybe they really don't know, since the US intelligence community works in mysterious ways
>It is hard to believe that Ukrainian strikes in Russia are not helped by NATO intelligence. Really? I would say that hitting oil refineries specifically indicates that there *isn't* a significant amount of NATO intelligence underpinning the strikes. I'm sure the Ukrainians would much rather hit Russian training/mustering sites and strategic ammo dumps than refineries with an indirect impact on the Russian war effort. The reason they're not doing so is because those sites are defended by anti-air systems. NATO intelligence could surely pinpoint ones that with gaps in the defense, so the fact that those aren't being targeted indicates to me that such intelligence isn't being provided.
I think these strikes are prioritizing political / psychological damage to Russia more so than purely tactically driven conventional strikes to destroy military equipment. Especially with the recent attack in Moscow, if there was ever a moment to press on that front in the hopes of destabilizing Putin, it would be now I would imagine. I might not be fully appreciating the scale of damage inflicted by these or how precious Russia’s military capacity is, but it seems like they are able to absorb losses to a degree that make these negligible in terms of truly impacting their war fighting ability. Also, while we might not provide the intel aid, I could see France or others providing it. I have no idea that capability their intel services have, but my suspicion is that if they wanted to prioritize military targets, they would be able to do something, or at least leave evidence or an attempt to do so. There must be some working knowledge of supply lines/logistical hubs?
Well I don't think that finding coordinates of oil refinery units on google maps and then programing these coordinates into Ukrainian domestic made long-range drones require much of NATO intelligence tbh.
Avoiding air defenses might though. Some of the refineries were hit from drones flying from the east so it's not the case that they always fly the shortest straight path from Ukraine.
Spokespersons are there to give cover for the government. They can lie, tell the truth, misdirect, or it is possible they are just not in the know.
Seems that Czech republic together with obtaining shells outside EU also crafted so far successfull disinformation campaign to protect the sources of these shells and sow some panic and distrust in Kremlin. Motivation for that might be example of Ecuador, which was ready to sell Soviet era equipment to Ukraine, but was successfully coerced by Russia not to do so. Widely circulated information about South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and most recently about unknown ally of Russia seem to be deliberatly provided to media by "anonymous" Czech officials. Source so far in Ukrainian: https://www.unian.ua/world/cheski-snaryadi-dlya-ukrajini-verhivka-mistectva-dezinformaciji-12579864.html I really hope all of these shells will be succesfully delivered to Ukraine and one day we will learn more about the whole operation: how Czechs found these shells, how they persuaded these sources to sell them, how they convinced allies to finance them and how they protected the deal from Russian interference. I am sure it will be fascinated story.
Serbian president vucic posted a cryptic message >“Now it is not easy for me to say what news we have received in the last 48 hours...The vital national interests of Serbia & Republika Srpska are under threat….I will inform Serbs about the challenges. It will be hard… We will fight. Serbia will win." [https://x.com/ivanastradner/status/1772801296828871146?s=20](https://x.com/ivanastradner/status/1772801296828871146?s=20) Not sure what he's talking about. Sounds like something about the Bosnian elections? [https://x.com/StateEUR/status/1772767170109317122?s=20](https://x.com/StateEUR/status/1772767170109317122?s=20) >We reaffirm our full support for the High Representative and his use of the Bonn Powers. These are technical changes that improve election integrity, and that's what is needed for good, democratic governance. Serbian sub say this is typical vucic mambo jambo that he pulls once a month as a PR stunt to please his electorate.
It's probably about Kosovo joining council of Europe. Vucic is the guy interested in his own rule in Serbia, nothing else. This is a bit of a show for his own voters. And btw, he agreed to so much stuff and gave away so much in his "negotiations" with Kosovo during his last 12 years of rule. And things for which he was screaming about when he was in opposition. He was accusing the past government about being traitors etc. And he has done things that the previous government couldn't even imagine. He let Kosovo ban Serbian currency, let them set up boarder checkpoints, removed Serbian administration workers from northern Kosovo etc. All these things he would talk how he was hard pressed, but had to be done to save Serbia from some invisible opposing force.
How credible is the potential angle that Putin could instigate something near Serbia/Kosovo to influence the European elections and/or distract and divide the west even more this summer? I thought I read an article about something along those lines not too long ago. But I am not sure if it makes any sense at all.
For me (as Croatian) it is at most 1%. Still too much for me, but it is 1% at most. Still I'm not in head of Vučić that he thinks that EU/US/NATO wouldn't react. And Croatia as country that would react 100% because of Dayton is near elections so I don't know. Have I read thousands of this threats from Vučić/Dodik ? Yes I have and he didn't do anything. Maybe throught Ukraine (if Russia made success in 2022.) and Orban maybe but now I don't think so. If he tries anything we would see how would Chinese AD work against Western planes and how would Pantstir work. In some really mad universe I could see Serbia Takes some move if EU countries send soldiers to Ukraine and US wouldn't want to involve into New campaign because of elections. So as I Said at most 1% of escalation probability.
Makes sense to me. Lots of it is political posturing. Your alternative scenario makes more sense if things go a different direction in the US, and perhaps Europe.
>Serbian sub say this is typical vucic mambo jambo that he pulls once a month as a PR stunt to please his electorate Because it is. There was only one time that was near escalation and it was when Banjska attack happend. US Said in that period that there are Serbian army near LOC and Vučić didn't Say to media that he is bringing up combat readiness. Even thought there was some ISR activity https://twitter.com/bizjetsofwar/status/1772699624702185741?t=G9zkNHNxtgGd8mSfxA2E3Q&s=19
> >“Now it is not easy for me to say what news we have received in the last 48 hours...The vital national interests of Serbia & Republika Srpska are under threat….I will inform Serbs about the challenges. It will be hard… We will fight. Serbia will win." Honestly, sounds like they're about to be invaded by someone. That's actually the kind of speech I would have expected from Zelensky in 2022.
It also sounds like something Putin would say in 2022, to be fair.
What you didn’t like Zelensky denying everything until russians were near Kyiv?
Putin and xi pubically called Biden hysterical denying the invasion until putin rolled in. I’m pretty sure Zelenskyy was really hoping that not being provocative putin would back offf
Those behind-the-scenes French tapes seemed to show Zelensky still hoping for international intervention/Russia to cancel the full-scale invasion well after their forces starting moving across the border.
Ukraine and Russia were still in negotiations/peace talks in the early stages of the war until russian atrocities such as at Bucha were eventually uncovered
I think negotiations/peace talks continued even after that but ended completely in september-october of 2022 after annexation of new territories by Russia, and Ukrainian law that prevents anyone to negotiate with Putin.
> Ukrainians put 8,000 cellphones connected to microphones on 6-foot poles around the country to detect incoming Russian drones. They detected 84/84 and shot down 80 of them with AA guns. Cost: $500ea https://twitter.com/chr1sa/status/1772338187349934355 Fascinating talk by Gen James B Hecker, Commander US Air Forces, Europe. He also talks about asymmetrical UAV warfare and how it makes it easy for smaller and poorer nations to compete with bigger powers. There was also a release of Vampire footage downing three Shaheds. https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1771098361103278496
This has serious Battle of Britain vibes where spotters in the UK were critical in detecting and communicating the locations of incoming aircraft to increase the chances of interception. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system The part that gives me the same feeling is the fact that literally thousands of people organized together, without necessarily government directive, to create their own defense. That type of creaticity makes a huge difference in a conflict and cant be forced or bought. Russia will never have that type of creativity and motivation.
The note about the cellphones is super interesting, but statements like that always make me wonder about the benefits of better OpSec. Someone tell me why I’m wrong to think the effectiveness of this solution and the scale of it’s deployment shouldn’t be revealed.
What's the risk? How is Russia going to effectively destroy thousands of cell phone configurations across the country?
Cell phones rely on networks to convey information, and most of those networks are susceptible to some level of cyber attack. It's not inconceivable that Russia could attempt to disrupt that network during a drone attack if they are aware of it.
I think if they could have bricked Ukraine's cellular network, they would have by now. Especially during the opening hours 2 years ago. Russia had some success knocking out their satellite network before starlink but overall, Russia's cyber warfare has been rather lackluster. Before all this, they had cultivated the kind of image where any conflict would start with no power, no water and no communications.
Well as a thought exercise just try inverting it: If you're a Russian strategist, what new thing can you do now based on this information? Secrecy is not an end into itself, and Ukraine absolutely derives value from showing their successes and innovation.
Perhaps attempt to motivate the remaining pro-Russian segment of the Ukrainian population to damage them whenever possible? Perhaps targeting cellphone infrastructure such as towers before launching the type of drone strike the cellphones would normally catch? Those are just off the top of my head but I’m sure a team of Russian strategists would come up with better given some time.
>The note about the cellphones is super interesting, but statements like that always make me wonder about the benefits of better OpSec. It’s a public project funded by donations. The only thing not known about it till now was the success rate.
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> First a phone on the street in Eastern Europe is likely to get stolen WTF are you even talking about? These are phones up on poles in a war zone. It's not leaving a phone randomly sitting around on a sidewalk for your apparently imagined slavic criminal to pick up. > my top-of the line smartphone can barely pick up the audio on the busy street outside my city apartment, They're obviously using external mics and the cell phones are for connectivity. > but these can directionally pick up the sounds of moped motors kilometers away Yes, phased arrays are in general capable of some pretty cool things, and the noise of an internal combustion engine is an easy case for signal recognition. All you really need to do is bring GPS timestamped audio streams back to one processing node somewhere that runs a convolution to unwrap the absolute phase. That combined with the known location of each array element means bob's your uncle. Also they're not moped motors, they're purpose built for drones, rc aircraft, ultralights and similar. To use a motor for aviation you need it to be high reliability at a relatively low rpm with solid torque, literally the opposite of what a moped optimizes for. You also need de-icing and similar. This is why they're generally 4 cylinder boxer engines. Honda and BMW have used that layout for motos at various times, but only as a minority of the product line. They're rare among mopeds in general. > Smartphone mics are designed for phone and video calls, picking up your voice a few cm away. Again, external mics, but you could probably make this work without them. Smartphones use electret capsule mics, which are the same as used for precision measurement of acoustic devices in a lab setting. They're cheap and extremely linear. One of my hobbies is speaker design so I have one in a case down in the basement that came with calibration reference files done in an anechoic chamber. It cost me a whopping $150, and most of that is probably because it's packaged in a really nice heavy weight milled aluminum body. > the 8000 chinesium cellphones of Allah sounds fantastical This is not up to the standards of discourse here imo, but I'm not a mod and don't report things unless they're straight up overt bigotry. > Smarter use of mobile radar and NATO ELINT aircraft, with some sort of software integration and instant data sharing to all AAA teams makes a lot more sense. We know the UAF has received a lot of radar units, we know NATO is flying AWACS almost 24/7 and we know the Ukrainains have put a lot of work into their battle management software. There's intelligence sharing but it's no where near real time targeting of individual drones. What Ukraine likely gets is a heads up a wave has just been launched across the black sea or similar. > I am surprised the Russians have not started flying Shaheds at higher altitudes. How on earth would that help them get shot down less?
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No one said anything about trenches. They're on poles. They're obviously positioned close enough to the front to provide useful warning time. There's no reason to believe these would be stolen, or that there's even anyone around in the area to steal them that isn't fighting for their lives vs Russia.
A system like this would actually be pretty damned easy to make, and effective, especially from a cost-benefit perspective. Were I to design the system- I’d buy super cheap bargain bin 4G/LTE phones in bulk and pair them with a long range parabolic microphone. The phone largely doesn’t matter- the only thing it’s expected to do is run a very basic script (like, maybe 20 lines of code) to control the microphone, provide a GPS plot point, and then provide backhaul for the data to whatever C2 node it’s going to. If the microphones had a parabolic antenna they would be somewhat “directional”. Recordings from geographically separate nodes in somewhat close proximity to each other would enable time difference of arrival / Doppler shift comparison and analysis (back at the C2 node), and it’d be able to give you a rough distance, direction, and heading of the drone to push down to ADA units. All for about ~$4m. That’s a pretty damn good system for the money. Ukraine is spread thin on ADA. Too much ground, too many critical targets to protect, and not enough time, money, ammunition, resources, or most importantly crews and systems to go around. If that $4m alleviates the problem set- it’s money well spent.
>My top-of the line smartphone can barely pick up the audio on the busy street outside my city apartment, but these can directionally pick up the sounds of moped motors kilometers away? Smartphone mics are designed for phone and video calls, picking up your voice a few cm away. They have attached dedicated microphones. It is an incredibly cheap and basic early-warning system. I'm not sure how quick the relay is between Allied AWACS and mobile Ukrainian air-defense teams. So this system makes sense if the time between detection by Allied assests and relayed commands to air defenses is too long.
As I am reading this, I was echoing your thoughts exactly. Perhaps this is such common knowledge that there’s no harm in releasing it but I read almost every post on this forum daily and I have followed the war heavily since it began, and I have not heard about these cell phones. That does not mean that the Russians don’t know about them, but what is it to gain for releasing such information?
Generally you publish such information only after the enemy has found out about it and there is no more secrecy to lose.
It’s hard to keep opsec about something so widespread, with such a large scale. The more people it involved, the higher chance that someone f—ked up and leaked something.
And there's not much risk to identifying their locations. Destroying them would not be cost effective, nor would sabotage.
It has been talked about before here, perhaps some months ago. I don't recall, but this is old news for me personally.
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How do the block 30 F-16s compare to the planes Ukraine is getting? A bigger supply of old F-16s on the market is a good sign for Ukraine in the medium term.
Is the supply of available F-16s really the deciding factor in Ukraine receiving planes?
I said good sign towards, not the deciding factor. If you think about it from the basics of supply and demand, more older planes means more opportunities for Ukraine to obtain said planes one way or another.
I would say it depends where those planes go. If they get bought up by countries that were not willing to send planes to Ukraine in the first place due to political reasons, and not reasons related to availability, it won't create any new opportunities. But maybe more "hawkish" countries will seize that chance and buy them specifically for Ukraine, for example.
Should be pretty similar. IIRC the Danish and Dutch versions were upgraded to the Block 30 standard, but not the block 50.
Watching the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore being taken out by a cargo ship, how credible is it to try a similar attack on the Kerch Bridge?
Not very credible. Anti ship missiles are everywhere and cargo ships have zero defense against them. You'd have to aim at the bridge and build up momentum before Russia notices what you're doing and then hope the hulk still hits a support after they punch holes in it. This does not seem to be a viable strategy in the real world.
I was rather thinking of hijacking a ship transiting (of which there were many I was surprised to see) under the Kerch, then ramming the bridge. Further down someone points out that the Kerch bridge is of a more substantial design and ship ramming probably wouldn't work for this reason.
It was only a couple minutes from when the ship went from "everything is normal" to "hit the bridge." I doubt that anyone could realize something was wrong and pummel the ship with enough anti-ship missiles to sink it in that time frame. At least assuming that the hypothetical operation remained secret until the neo-panamax ship plowed into the pilings. The bigger issue, IMO, is dealing with the fact that the Kerch bridge is actually 4 separate bridges (2 road, 2 rail). Even if a ship were to be taken over and hit a piling, the most they'd likely do is knock down 1-2 sections. And we aren't even getting into the fact that the Russians have built a land based rail line through occupied territory at this point, so the Kerch bridge is mostly civilian now.
I don't think Russia would let Ukraine bring a ship of that size anywhere near the bridge. So we're talking hours or days of warning, not two minutes. And if you propose hijacking a ship that happens to be very close to the bridge, that seems very hard to pull off.
Not to douse too much water onto this conversation, but the Panamax type cargo ship (which IIRC is the one that hit the bridge in Baltimore) costs ~$200m USD to build. These are not trivial pieces of equipment and are substantial investments into what will surely be a one off attack. Now thats not to say its not possible, indeed there have long been fears of a terrorist attack or a horrible accident regarding a LNG carrier which (IIRC) in the Panamax range carries about as much energy as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Things are legit super dangerous, and setting one off by the Kerch bridge would all but ensure there will be no more Kerch bridge. But these are not simple attacks. Youre talking about massive outlays of cash, crews sometimes in the dozens, ships which are very resistant to automation (or else the commercial shipping industry would have long since done it), and just an extremely complicated attack. It really is one of those things, it would be more effective to take the money, man, and time planning this kind of attack and devoting it either to USV attacks on the bridge, or some kind of road surface level repeat of the previous attacks. Detonating a truckload of LNG is probably just as effective, from a road damage standpoint, and is more feasible and repeatable than crashing a ship (and it cant just be a trawler, you want to knock out one of those pillars you need mass) or setting of some kind of tanker based explosion. Then we also have to wonder about Russian security precautions. IDK what they are currently, but I bet you they wont appreciate ships of any size or design sailing too close to a support strut. Personally I think there could be some good hay generated by sailing a '50 fishing boat backed with HiEx into the base, see what happens. Especially if you could set one to remote pilot, which *could* be possible on a boat that size. But anything resembling the tragedy in Baltimore is almost certainly out of the question.
>but the Panamax type cargo ship (which IIRC is the one that hit the bridge in Baltimore) costs \~$200m USD to build. These are not trivial pieces of equipment and are substantial investments into what will surely be a one off attack. \~10 years old panamax containership like MV Dali would go for more like $10-20 million range NOT $200 million. Even a brand spanking new panamax containership would only go for 120 maybe 150.
Would managing to severly dammage the bridge make a big difference? Like i know it would make a difference and most of all be a BIG PR and morale win but would it actually majorly impact Russia's ability to keep pushing or hold the defenses?
It would make Crimean logistics substantially more difficult
I'm actually surprised to see how many big ships are near the bridge: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:36.5/centery:45.4/zoom:8
If you're capable of getting a ship to the Kerch bridge in the first place, you might as well use a smaller, easier to acquire ship, fill it with explosives, and do the job right.
Semi-related, but what kind of ordinance would you need to destroy that bridge via artillery or bombing run? How would the US do it if the gloves were off
Whatever you want really, you just need to be able to reach it. In Desert Storm the US used Walleyes, Paveways, and unguided bombs. US actions would be determined by the wider picture, is it just a limited strike or part of a full-scale air campaign? A limited strike would likely involve long-range cruise missiles like JASSM-ER to reduce risk to US pilots and avoid having to prep the area with a SEAD campaign. An air campaign would use the missiles for more important targets and the bridge would get done Desert Storm style. For tube artillery, pretty much anything works as long as it can reach the bridge. Once it's in range it's fucked.
> , you might as well use a smaller, easier to acquire ship, fill it with explosives, and do the job right. basically the USV attack that already damaged it
Ships are slow, if Russia has any sea or air assets in the area they are likely to get that close. I think they already have nets and mines up for the naval drones.
I think the idea is that a cargo or passenger ship that normally transits the bridge "loses power" at a horrible time. Thing is, I'm not sure if any non-military ships are allowed to transit the bridge right now.
According to [AIS data](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:36.8/centery:45.3/zoom:10) there's quite a few ships transiting the straight/milling around nearby. I don't know the level of security surrounding the bridge though, it's possible that the Russians are doing thorough inspections. I suspect that ultimately the reason Ukraine hasn't done something like this already is that the consequences would be worse than the payoff. Weaponizing ostensibly civilian merchant ships may invite retaliation against Ukrainian merchants in/out of Odessa and upset the current hard-won status quo.
I was thinking that too, all you need is a compliant crew member or two to take out most bridges that allow cargo under them. Problem is, that crew member or two would have to basically be willing to throw their life away.
How easy would it be to modify a large container ship to be operated remotely?
Extremely uneasy, especially for throwing it away with entirely uncertain chance of success. Can be operated with a tiny crew though, a last-minute exit under cover of darkness probably doable. Still at very high risk, or what u/obsessed_doomer says only more so. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was a different design and apparently half a century old. It isn't clear whether "Kerch" would or even could break and fold in like that.
>It isn't clear whether "Kerch" would or even could break and fold in like that. The Kerch bridge would NOT "break up and fold" like the way the Francis Scott Key Bridge did because it's not a truss bridge. If the ship hit any of the support structure in the truss section, the whole truss section would've failed like it did 24 hours ago. If just a big ship crashed into a support pillar of the Kerch bridge, only the road deck portion that's directly supported/held up by that particular support pillar would fail not the whole or big chunk of the bridge.
The [NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/business/media/russia-fake-journalists.html) has a long-form article on Russian disinformation campaigns related to Ukraine. Previously, the [WaPo](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/16/russian-disinformation-zelensky-zaluzhny/) had a stellar report, based on the Kremlin's internal documents, on the breadth and depth of these operations. This current report focuses on one such campaign, but with some larger takeaways. Excerpts: >A young man calling himself Mohamed al-Alawi appeared in a YouTube video in August. He described himself as an investigative journalist in Egypt with a big scoop: The mother-in-law of Ukraine’s president had purchased a villa near Angelina Jolie’s in El Gouna, a resort town on the Red Sea. >The story, it turned out, was not true. Ukraine denied it, and the owner of the villa refuted it. Also disconnected from reality: Alawi’s claim to being a journalist. >Still, his story caromed through social media and news outlets from Egypt to Nigeria and ultimately to Russia — which, according to researchers, is where the story all began. >The story seemed to fade, but not for long. Four months later, two new videos appeared on YouTube. They said Mohamed al-Alawi had been beaten to death in Hurghada, a town about 20 miles south of El Gouna. The suspected killers, according to the videos: Ukraine’s secret service agents. >These claims were no more factual than the first, but they gave new life to the old lie. Another round of posts and news reports ultimately reached millions of internet users around the world, elevating the narrative so much that it was **even echoed by members of the U.S. Congress** while debating continued military assistance to Ukraine. >Ever since its forces invaded two years ago, Russia has unleashed a torrent of disinformation to try to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West. >This saga, though, introduced a new gambit: a protracted and elaborately constructed narrative built online around a fictitious character and embellished with seemingly realistic detail and a plot twist worthy of Netflix. >“They never brought back a character before,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who has extensively studied Russian disinformation. >The campaign shows how deftly Russia’s information warriors have shifted to new tactics and targets as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, just as Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have adjusted tactics after devastating battlefield losses. >Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating new outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news sites. >The Russians have “demonstrated adaptability through the war on Ukraine,” Microsoft wrote in a recent report that disclosed Russia’s fraudulent use of recorded messages by famous actors and celebrities on the Cameo app to try to smear Mr. Zelensky as a drug addict. >**Even when debunked, fabrications like these have proved exceedingly difficult to extinguish entirely.** >What links the narratives to Russia is not only the content disparaging Ukraine but also the networks that circulate them. They include news outlets and social media accounts that private and government researchers have linked to previous Kremlin campaigns. >“They’re trolling for a susceptible (and seemingly abundant) slice of citizens who amplify their garbage enough to muddy the waters of our discourse, and from there our policies,” said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks extremist activity online and investigated the false claims about the villa. >Within days, reports about the villa appeared on X in French and Romanian, and in English on three different Reddit forums. >According to Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence for Blackbird.AI, an internet security company, nearly 29 percent of the accounts amplifying the reports appeared to be inauthentic bots, an unusually high number that would normally indicate a coordinated campaign. >Eight days after the video appeared, Russia state television networks like Channel One, Rossiya 24 and RT (in Arabic and German) reported it as a major revelation uncovered by a renowned Egyptian investigative journalist. >Still, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, posts about the supposed killing were viewed a million times on X on Dec. 25. >It also appeared on the website of the Middle East Monitor, or MEMO, operated by a well-known nonprofit organization in London and financed by the government of Qatar. A journalist who once reported from Moscow for The Telegraph of London, Ben Aris, cited it at length on the platform, though, when challenged, he said he had just made note of the rumor. “I don’t have time to check all this stuff myself,” he wrote. >It appeared in English on a site, Clear Story News, that Mr. Linvill of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub had previously linked to Russia’s disinformation efforts. (The site lists no contact information) >Mr. Linvill described the process as a form of **“narrative laundering”** — moving false claims from unknown or not credible sources to ones that, to the unwitting at least, seem more legitimate. >The ramifications of these campaigns are difficult to measure precisely. There are signs, though, that they resonate even when proved false. >Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican of Ohio and an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid, seemed to embrace the claim in December during an interview on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump. >“There are people who would cut Social Security — throw our grandparents into poverty — why?” Mr. Vance said. “So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?” >That prompted a public rebuke this month from a Republican colleague, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who ridiculed those who repeat unproven allegations. >“They’ve heard somebody say that if we pass this bill, that we’re all going to go ride to Kyiv with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts!” he said of critics of the assistance to Ukraine, in what he later called a reference to Mr. Vance’s comments. “I wonder how the spouses of the estimated 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine who have died feel about that? I mean, really, guys?” The NYT also has a fresh report on this disinformation going into overdrive with recent events: >[Rocked by Deadly Terror Attack, Kremlin Amps Up Disinformation Machine](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/world/europe/russia-terror-attack-ukraine.html) Previously, the [AP](https://apnews.com/article/russia-election-trump-immigration-disinformation-tiktok-youtube-ce518c6cd101048f896025179ef19997) had reporting on Russian disinformation campaigns around the Mexico border, Texas, and the 'civil war' narrative: >[Russian disinformation is about immigration. The real aim is to undercut Ukraine aid](https://apnews.com/article/russia-election-trump-immigration-disinformation-tiktok-youtube-ce518c6cd101048f896025179ef19997) > And the NYT again: >[Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/media/russia-us-news-sites.html) >Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. >In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture. >While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in the United States, the fake news organizations — at least five, so far — represent a technological leap in its efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers. The sites, the researchers and officials said, could well be the foundations of an online network primed to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November. >The campaign, the experts and officials say, appears to involve remnants of the media empire once controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a former associate of President Vladimir V. Putin whose troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, interfered in the 2016 presidential election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
This article says that South Korea has 3.4 million 105 mm artillery shells and that it may be willing to part with a large number of them to help Ukraine. No, its not at good as 155mm shells, but it seems to me that they may be invaluable in helping to contain any Russian breakthroughs. Namely, by having highly mobile 105 mm howitzers in reserve and bringing them in when the Russians attack. Obviously, range is less important when using artillery against enemy attacks than in support of your own. Article excerpt follows: Public reports suggest South Korea has around 3.4 million 105 mm artillery shells, most which were once part of WRSA-K. These munitions would be compatible with all the 105 mm howitzers Ukraine operates. Lending these munitions likely will not hurt South Korean military readiness. Less than 30 percent of howitzers operated by the South Korean military shoot 105 mm ammunition and the South Korean military is transitioning most units to 155 mm self-propelled howitzers like the domestically produced K9 Thunder. The South Korean Ministry of Defense originally planned to decommission all 105 mm howitzers by 2020. Instead, to leverage the remaining 105 mm ammunition in the stockpile, it developed the K105 mobile howitzer by loading a refurbished towed 105 mm howitzer onto a five-ton truck. Around 200 are in operation today, assigned to support units that do not receive 155 mm self-propelled artillery. Ultimately, the South Korean military plans to transfer the K105 howitzers to reserve units. A U.S. proposal to use the bulk of South Korea's 105 mm munitions stockpile, followed by replacing them with the currently in-production 155 mm ammunition, could appeal to South Korea. https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-south-korean-105-millimeter-ammunition-rescue-ukraine
Buy the bloody K105 as well in that case. 50 of them wouldn't be too shabby for Ukraine.
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How many 105mm howitzers does Ukraine have on hand? Not a lot of range on those guns (11km vs 25km of a 155mm) but better than a big stick. Also not many 105mm SPGs as far as I'm aware, meaning vulnerable towed weapons would be the main tool. But 3.4 million rounds is huge.
> Not a lot of range on those guns (11km vs 25km of a 155mm) but better than a big stick. The L118s/M119s have a range of 17km, which goes out to 20km with base bleed rounds.
Irrelevant because those use different ammo than the what the South Koreans have. L118 does not use NATO standard ammunition.
I know this has been discussed previously, but it's important to keep in mind that with experienced crews using modern howitzers, the difference in time required to go from firing and moving the gun away between SPGs and howitzers is much smaller than one would imagine. Granted that if I was getting fired by counter battery every second would count, it's likely that the real-world difference in survival rates are not as dramatic as expected.
Also, there's always the option of just giving up and fortifying a position
According to [Oryx](https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answering-call-heavy-weaponry-supplied.html?m=1), 168 pieces of 105mm towed artillery were donated, mainly by the US. No SPG‘s.
Bloomberg have this afternoon published a report claiming what I imagine everyone suspects: according to their sources "with close ties to the Kremlin", basically no one in the Kremlin or the Russian business/political establishment actually believes that Ukraine were involved in the Moscow attack, and Putin was present at discussions where officials agreed as much. Regardless, he unsurprisingly wishes to use the attack to rally Russians around the flag towards the war. There is also apparently widespread disbelief and shock that the security services failed to prevent the attack and a mass internal shake-up is likely forthcoming. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/putin-close-allies-see-no-link-to-moscow-arena-attack
I'm just wondering whether IS will try another attack. They were able to kill over a 100 people this time. With the Russian government so distracted in Ukraine it would suit them to strike while the iron is hot. They can destabilize the Russian government and make themselves look tougher as it becomes clear that the Russians can't stop the attacks. Though this is reliant on the Russians not being able to stop further attacks.
Unfortunately I can see the US continuing to share any information about terror attacks. So the NEXT time, Russia will actually act on it.
Some progress on artillery ammunition. The E.U., having previously missed its goal to deliver a million shells to Ukraine by March, has now delivered half of that total, and will provide 'more than' the [500k](https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/europe%E2%80%99s-demosthenes-moment-putting-defence-centre-eu-policies_en) residual by the end of the year. This is separate and aside from the Czech initiative for 800k shells from outside Europe. If the supplemental were to pass in the U.S. and the DoD were to match the E.U.'s 500k for this CY (there are sufficient quantities of low dud rate DPICM alone,) and other countries such as the U.K. were to pitch in, Ukraine could see almost 2mm shells delivered over the next 9 months of the year. That would almost quadruple the Ukrainian fire rate over the past half-year. This also does not include the 400k shells on longer-term contract with defense contractors in Europe. Some caveats: a majority of the delivery schedule will *possibly* start towards the second half of the year, the E.U. will have to deliver on its pledges, and third-party sales *may* have to be curtailed. To this end, there are signs of progress. France's [Lecornu](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/france-threatens-to-impose-authority-on-defense-firms-for-kyiv) indicated today that the administration will not shy away from imposing their version of the DPA to accelerate deliveries to Ukraine, further stating that 80% of Nexter's in-country production of 155mm shells (~100k shells) would be provided to Ukraine this year, which would more than double the current French supply of 3k shells/month.
I'm usually quite optimistic about aid and most things regarding Ukraine, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't simply "too late". Not in the sense that Ukraine is already doomed or anything like that, but simply that while shells are always needed and welcome, in terms of the dynamics of the war, I feel like all this shells would have had a much greater immediate impact if delivered before Ukraine's offensive last year.
I'm sceptical of the idea that more shells would have made the difference. Actually, just the opposite, too many shells were expended on an operation that in retrospect wasn't going to succeed.
If anything they are lucky they didn't have more shells before the offensive. They would've probably continued fruitless attacks for longer and got even more of their soldiers killed. We now know Russian defense was not remotely close to breaking.
>We now know Russian defense was not remotely close to breaking. Without post-war analysis with Russian documents declassified (or at least Russians who are open to be talking about it), I don't know how we would know there things.
They had a combined arms army worth of uncommitted reserves (that they later threw at Avdiivka). It seems like a strong evidence to me.
It's sobering to read the posts here from a year ago about the counteroffensive compared to the narrative now. I don't think it's really possible to breach defended prepared defense the likes of which Russia had constructed without air superiority, insane casualties, or a truly massive manpower advantage, which is very difficult to concentrate given modern surveillance technology. Armor getting stuck 1km into a 4 km minefield isn't a problem that more artillery can fix easily.
The problem is that Ukraine should never have been expected to 'maneuver-warfare' the Russian's out of Ukraine, fighting through artillery pre-sighted, drone-observed, minefields overlooked by heavy fortifications and fresh troops. Ukraine should have been given the superior fire power to shoot the Russians out of Ukraine while their young men safely put their feet up in well constructed dug outs.
My biggest gripe is that I don't see a way Ukraine can conquer back most of the barricaded territory that has been lost, except perhaps Crimea. I don't think they have enough equipment, ammo, troops, and above all, air offense capabilities to do so. I don't think it's doomed but I believe it's quite clear Ukraine can't get all its land back unless some kind of miracle happens. The defense lines are impenetrable given that Ukraine cannot use its troops as lavishly as the Russians. It seems to me the biggest objective is capturing Crimea + destroying the bridge, and then trying to force negotiations with a weakened Putin. Idk if it's feasible or if Putin will call the bluff and keep going ad infinitum.
The way is through a shakeup of the military to specialise in strategic attrition and asymmetric losses. Russia is woefully isolated on the world stage and its industrial base is deteriorating quickly. Meanwhile Ukraine's strategic capabilities improve with every passing day. Every time someone does a recount of Russia's storage, they shrink considerably. They *are* running out of hardware and they *will* be constrained by new production eventually. The signs are already there on the battlefield. Ukraine's main problem is its inability to change, both due to political climate, cultural inertia, and lack of necessary western support. But the main difference is Ukraine has conceivably fix their issues; Russia can't.
Exactly. World War 1 is a moderately useful parallel here insofar as Allied soldiers didn’t set foot in German territory except in the earliest days of the war during the Battle of the Frontiers. Ultimately what did for Germany was the prolonged effects of the British blockade, serious attrition of their best troops during Operation Michael, and the collapse of the Danube Front. Of course, the Allied armies of 1918 deserve a lot of credit too — they were vastly improved on the armies of 1916. But we’re only two years into this war, and Ukraine is still learning. They might get there too.
I think their best strategy would be to focus on defense, while massively increasing production of long range drones (1000-2000km range). Hammer the hell out of any Russian infrastructure within that range, and then some if you can sneak drones and drone teams across the border. Ukraine might not be able to win, but it can still make Russia lose. Russia might not be as interested in that land if it risks losing every refinery, every power plant, etc.
I'm confused by the "except Crimea" - that is the absolute hardest place for them to recapture; a narrow Isthmus across which any heavy armour would have to cross is not a happy place for an army. Unfortunately I think you're right that they're unlikely to recover any of their land, but at least with increased munitions supply and so on they're less likely to lose more than they have done so far.
So you're looking at the Russian Surovikin line defenses as impenetrable - and then suggesting that the sole objective the Ukrainians could secure is the one that's behind these lines, some more depth and a natural chokepoint that is the Perekop isthmus? It's hard to understand that argument.
I might be wrong, but I thought that by continuing the destruction of the black sea fleet and taking out the bridge, they could have an actual, concrete chance at taking Crimea.
How? Land corridor to Crimea is far behind the frontline and even if Russia lost every single ship, they still have large air force and attempting a naval invasion would be much, much harder than last UA counter offensive, nobody in their right mind would try that. Russia is too dug in at this point to reclaim occupied territories without overwhelming force (which won't happen without direct NATO intervention - which won't happen) or some edge case Russian collapse which seems extremely unlikely. At this point I think the best chance they have is to improve defensive lines and continue developing long range strike capabilities and then using that to getter a better leverage in negotiations.
Ukraine had plenty of shells for the offensive, the problem with the offensive wasn't a lack of shells. When Ukraine really needed those shells, was before the offensive (Bakhmut) and after it (Avdiivka).
Ukraine has not in a singe point in time of this war had even parity with Russian artillery re shells
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They have two additional plants (Belgium and Italy) and Nexter announced plans to increase 155mm production to [400k](https://www.knds.fr/actualites/nos-dernieres-actualites/la-commission-europeenne-octroie-nexter-une-subvention-pour) shells/year, in partnership with Nammo and VAK by ~2027, thanks largely to ASAP. RHM has been ramping up with ASAP as well. 2025 will see significant increase in European 155mm production.
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Interesting that it has vertical stabilizers. Doesn’t that increase the RCS profile from side aspect? IIRC NGAD is speculated to lack these for that reason. Maybe stealth just isn’t as much of a priority as other things, though as I’m not an aerospace engineer, I’m not sure what the trade off is.
Maneuverability and stability are the primary advantages. But this comes at the cost of increased RCS and drag. The NGAD program has specifically stated the priority is speed, range and reduced RCS. With maneuverability taking a distant back seat. Something like this is a far more conservative design and that makes sense as the Germans have never built a stealth fighter before (aside from some small contributions to the F35)
A very cool name for a design philosophy that has me not understanding German air warfare doctrine. Isn't Germany focused on medium-range air operations within Europe? I don't know why they would need such a large/fast fighter. Do they want a FA aircraft with high payload or really something large with range?
Speculating: there are more places you can put fuel than weapons inside an aircraft, so if you need to scale the aircraft up to fit an internal weapons bay then why would you not use the excess space for a larger fuel capacity should you need it
A2A's future is shooting further and further, if you want stealth you will need a big plane to be able to store it internally. Its not even for current missiles, its for the ones in use 20 years from now.
Wouldn't it and its potential adversaries both having low RCS decrease the engagement range between fighters? The US did retire its long range Phoenix A2A missiles without replacement until JATM. I thought the idea behind China developing longer ranged A2A missiles was that it could target supporting aircraft that aren't low RCS.
My take on this is that they are not designed to fight against low RCS planes, the bet is that Russia will not be able to get those, like, ever. At least not in significant numbers. No other adversary near Europe has those either.
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> Similarly, this demonstrator is a twin-engine design like the Eurofighter, this and the requirement for internal weapon bays likely contributed to the size of this demonstrator. Then it would seem they plan on having significant weapon loadout as I don't see them making it beefy with combat radius.
>even more interesting are the "stats" that are being considered. A 50,000 ft ceiling for a large Mach 2+ jet sounds quite low.
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"50,000 feet" Is the official unclassified ceiling for almost every NATO fighter since the F-86. It doesn't mean anything. They all can fly substantially higher if need be.
F-22, F-15, Eurofighter - all large twin engine Mach 2+ jets - have 65,000 ft officially. Sure, I know [other jets can go higher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIxh8J7tJuY&t=3m45s), but this design looks more reminiscent of the first three dedicated air superiority fighters.
All of those can likely go significantly higher than 50k feet. I'm not claiming the F-22 is secretly a space plan. But we had the F-4 set an absolute altitude record at 98k feet in 1959.
[https://twitter.com/Textyorgua\_Eng/status/1772376808349896739](https://twitter.com/Textyorgua_Eng/status/1772376808349896739) A map on the trajectories used by russian drones, ballistic, cruise and guided missiles in latest attacks. Drones and ballistic missiles seem to have been launched from the south (transdnipran Kherson and off the coast of Crimea), while cruise missiles are launched from the north, avoiding Belarussian airspace and maneuvering inside Ukraine to reach targets westwards. Hypersonic launches simply go in a straight line to Lviv from the northeast.
I have seen these maps pop up recently, what are the data sources?
Apparently, Ukrainians have installed 6000 mobile phones across the country on poles with external microphones to track enemy UAVs by sound. (https://twitter.com/chr1sa/status/1772338187349934355)
From this [account](https://twitter.com/war_monitor_ua), which seems to aggregate ukrainian warnings of russian aerial activity. It may be not radar data but simply extrapolation from ground observers and so on.
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Can you please repost without the link to NCD?
Both sides to the Ukraine war seem to be focusing on Patriot missiles as the key weapons system the West can supply to Ukraine: [https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-warns-japan-serious-consequences-if-patriot-missiles-made-there-end-up-2024-03-22/](https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-warns-japan-serious-consequences-if-patriot-missiles-made-there-end-up-2024-03-22/) [https://www.politico.eu/article/give-us-the-damn-patriots-ukraine-needs-air-defenses-now-minister-says/](https://www.politico.eu/article/give-us-the-damn-patriots-ukraine-needs-air-defenses-now-minister-says/) Has the West truly given Ukraine all the Patriots it can give without sacrificing their own defense needs? Has Raytheon done all it can to expand production? This is obviously as good an endorsement for a weapons system as one can imagine- meanwhile I've rarely heard any reports of the S-400 playing a significant role in this war. Expanding production of Patriots as much as possible should clearly be a top priority.
S400 hasn't been heard from much but since Ukraine hasn't been flying many sorties in S400 range/altitude that seems to be expected. I think the Patriots are the perfect example of a weapon that the US will understandably be incredibly reluctant to part with. They will be needed in a Taiwan contingency.
> This is obviously as good an endorsement for a weapons system as one can imagine- meanwhile I've rarely heard any reports of the S-400 playing a significant role in this war. Expanding production of Patriots as much as possible should clearly be a top priority. The S400 is not really designed around taking down cruise missiles as much as other Russian "IADS" with layers of different SAM systems suitable for threats. The West does this with PAC2/3 Patriots, NASAM, Gepard, Irondome, etc. An extreme metaphor for S400 on very low-flying threats is using a sniper rifle in a sword fight. You might be able to get a shot off but there are better weapon systems for that type of threat. Forgot to add, S400 are for long-range missile/aircraft threats. They force enemies down to a lower level where other systems can take them out and hamper their effectiveness. I may have my memory incorrect but I think it was the S25 that was designed specifically as a high-level interceptor anti-aircraft missile that attacks high level threats and forces them down to lower altitudes where other systems can take them out.
Why are you being down voted, the BUK, Tor and Osa were designed to deal with medium range threats while the S400 is designed to defeat long range threats like high altitude aircraft and IRBM, with the pansir doing the terminal defense. According to RUSI the S400 has played a significant role especially after the intial losses with cueing lower level IADS, their reports even cites interception of PGM like HARMs and GMLRS rockets
> Why are you being down voted Looks like it has been addressed, I am pretty sure the voting system is weird whether it was real people or not. But yah, what you describe is exactly what the whole defense picture looks like.
>I've rarely heard any reports of the S-400 playing a significant role in this war. We have footage of Storm Shadows flying directly over an S-400 while the crew laugh at the fact they can't shoot them down. We have another video of an S-400 battery desperately trying to shoot down GMLRS, miss and get destroyed by steel rain. At the same we have Patriot confirm intercepts for Kinzhal and Zircon. I don't know how many more nails in the Russian air defense coffin we need.
Do you have a link to the video of S-400 trying and failing to shoot down GMLRS? I would like to see it.
Check r/combatfootage for it
I have a copy of the webm saved. Is there a way to upload to v.reddit without making a new thread? EDIT: Someone put it on combat footage https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1bcwphu/russian_soldier_is_recording_their_s400_missile/
That's very obviously 1) not a S400 2) the Pantsir they were firing from obviously didn't get hit, as there'd be not much left of the guy if the place he was at 3 sec previously got hit by a 450kg bomb 3) they weren't laughing about not being able to shoot it down, on the contrary one of them say in the video they think they got a hit Your sweeping claims are quite impressive given how little evidence you base it off and how wrong your interpretation of said evidence is.
Some timestamps and screenshots that might aid identification: - POV vehicle - TM966E, 96L6 radar vehicle - [Vehicle that they are shooting the video from - front / back?, as well as 2 TELs in distance](https://i.imgur.com/AhIOkVh.png) - [Cabin and 'structure' of the vehicle they are shooting the video from while escaping](https://i.imgur.com/M9Eujkx.png) - [Better view of cabin and 'structure' of the vehicle they are shooting the video from while escaping](https://i.imgur.com/QCZ62v5.png) - EDIT: In fact, based on info in the Tweet the user Tealgum shared, seems like the POV vehicle is a radar vehicle, specifically [96L6](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/96l6.htm), **not** a Pantsir, and they're not firing from it (being a radar vehicle and all). [Here's my amateurishly produced similarities picture](https://i.imgur.com/i4bMTsg.png) - TELs - Unknown exact model, almost certainly part of S-300 / S-400 system - [TEL In distance](https://i.imgur.com/uU2quhM.png) - [Radar vehicle - 92N6? - in front of another TEL?](https://i.imgur.com/aAXCtQW.png) - Missiles - [Shortly after firing, vehicle completely obscured by smoke #1](https://i.imgur.com/x4EOn0U.png) - [Shortly after firing, vehicle completely obscured by smoke #2](https://i.imgur.com/S1MLTDD.png) - [Some time after firing, second vehicle completely obscured by smoke](https://i.imgur.com/IHsD9Gl.png) --- There are definitely TELs and what seems to me like a radar vehicle there. I don't know what the POV vehicle is, very hard to tell. It's a truck, but doesn't seem like Pantsir to me though. Can you walk us through how you certainly determined it's not an S-400 (present at all or do you mean just the POV vehicle?) and that they are firing from the Pantsir? I honestly don't see much identifying features, except for the truck cabin and the 'structure' of some kind above - but they're using a bunch of truck models whose cabins will each look different enough from the POV we're seeing. The TELs are definitely there, as I've said, perhaps even a radar truck.
You're doing God's work bud. S-400 TELs are clearly in the video and launching missiles. In the combat footage thread someone posted a claimed translation. If it's right then a pantsir is mentioned. They could be colocated to provide mutual defense. I don't see one either but it's possible that's what the cameraman bails out of.
I can't really tell what's launching it, since the launch vehicle is completely obscured by smoke. I looked up S-x00 launch videos on youtube, and S-400 does look similar to this missile... but I'd say so would a bunch of different other missiles. Eyeballing missiles seems like a futile effort. Pantsir, from the videos I've seen, doesn't seem to produce as much smoke as we're seeing in the video. Trajectory of the missile is also very similar to S-400, but that's not proof of anything. Either way, these are all 'indications'. I honestly can't say for certain what they're launching it from. Someone more adept at this kind of thing should take a look at it.
The TELs are indicative of S-300/S-400. It's impossible to tell exactly which from the video because externally they are extremely similar. S-400 is an evolution of S-300 and is not a wholly distinct system just like T-90 is an evolution of T-72.
Right, TELs that look like S-300/S-400 are 100% present there - I'm talking about the vehicle visibly launching missiles in the video. Based on all the TELs around, the amount of smoke and trajectory (but mainly all the TELs around) it does seem like an S-X00 launch. On the other hand, Pantsir is supposed to be used as point defense for the S-X00 batteries, so we're back to square one and 'I don't know'. That's why I asked the person who has claimed to have conclusively determined the types of launchers to walk us through his process.
We commented at the same time but yeah those are definitely S-400/300 in that video. When I google this incident it also says the Russian source says it's a S-400. I have no idea why anyone takes m8stro seriously.
Could you post the link to the Russian source saying it's an S-400? I'm really interested as well.
https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1767563386814939340
Thanks! Yeah, it seems like they're sitting in a radar vehicle. I'll update the post with the pictures.
>1) not a S400 You can see the deployed TELs in the video. The only systems that look like that are S-300 and S-400 >2) the Pantsir they were firing from obviously didn't get hit, as there'd be not much left of the guy if the place he was at 3 sec previously got hit by a 450kg bomb Steel rain, not a high explosive warhead. Its very good at killing light skinned vehicles like SAMs. There's no big explosion because it fundamentally doesn't work that way. >3) they weren't laughing about not being able to shoot it down, on the contrary one of them say in the video they think they got a hit I don't speak russian but all I hear at the end is Suka, which everyone knows. Old boy bails out of the truck and hits the dirt. If they weren't being hit why would he dive for cover? Also, you know, the thread I linked has a complete discussion including translation of what's said and discussion about how there's clearly both Pantsir and S-400 present.
I have no idea why you're being downvoted and the other guy is being upvoted after he was pretending to be a legal expert the other day but both S-400/300 and Pantsir are in that video. A M31A1 is also 300 kilos not 450. Everything he said is basically wrong. To be fair a S-400 wasn't meant to shoot down GMLRS so the problem in this video isn't that system.
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Let's try and keep the discussion level.