So far the Ukrs have made "extensive" use of the HIMARS MLRS and it has served them well as a propaganda tool - even though they refrained from attacking military targets and rather chose civilians and the famous bridge and a dam wall as targets.
They did launch HIMARS rockets and other rockets and artillery at Russian military targets... but most of those were intercepted and did no damage, so they have used them against civilian targets and their own soldiers in captivity... before they talked they hope...
This time around the "attack" on Saki was credited towards the "indigenous" Grim-2 missile system which looks somewhat similar to the Iskander.
Rather less range, which suggests lower flight speed.
Now I don't want to jinks it, but if this is true, why haven't they followed it up with another Grim-2 attack?
Would ask the same question about their anti ship missiles that supposedly sank the Moskva...
If it was me I would have made an attack on Sevastopol or the Crimean Bridge or some other valuable target, just to keep the propaganda machine going.
There are a lot of serious communications buildings and HQs on Crimea they know the coordinates of that are in charge of the entire Black Sea Fleet which would be a much higher priority than hitting a few old ground attack aircraft and some newer multirole fighterbombers.
OR did they only manage to fund 2 to 3 missiles with all that new money coming in? If I had an invisible missile that is unstoppable - I would make it rain.
If they had a missile that could penetrate Russian air defences in Crimea without even being detected the US would pay trillions of dollars to them and shift production to the US...
We will probably never know the truth as it quite normal for any government to pull a veil of secrecy over these kind of operations.
Same with the Moskva disaster.
I am sure after the conflict is over there will be plenty of people who knew what happened who are ready to talk and some official investigation report will be released to give the Russian governments say on the matter.
They would rather hate Russians for saving Russians in some
ethno-fascist toilet like "Ukraine" (which they helped establish in 2004 and 2014) than to have affordable energy
for their economy and for their heating.
Right now they are prepared for the sacrifice, but a cold winter might change their minds...
I hope by that stage Russia has closed the German end of NSII and has started work on adding pipes to Kaliningrad.
Maybe even modify it so one pipe delivers gas and the other pipe has capsules that can be pumped down with normal air pressure as a delivery system for light cargo...
Put wheels on the capsules all around so it can roll in the pipe and still be blown by the air flow through the pipe...
I think in one of the James Bond movies they sent an agent through the pipes to get across the border to the west...
No bro, it is a much more long-lasting issue.
And the Russians, sorry, have a minor influence to that Laughing
Europe is getting poorer and poorer.
That is the point, covered with fancy and staged stats.
When you do things against your financial and economic interests like the EU does by following US orders then you are bound to find yourself in problems... the US is using the EU to damage Russia... they care about the EU the way a murderer cares about the broken bottle he is slashing his victim with... if it breaks and becomes ineffective then it gets dropped and something else is used to finish the job... the obvious problem is the EU is sugar glass and shatters into bits that do not cut skin... but the bear is just pissed off at getting hit...
Do you have figures for how effective Russian ATGMs have been in this war in hitting targets?
I would expect most Orc armour was hit before it was deployed during the first few weeks of the conflict, but 125mm guns likely killed more Orc armour than ATGMs and RPGs, but Soviet era ATGMs have proven effective world wide and in this conflict I would say most Russian Armour is more likely to have been hit or damaged by Soviet era or new Ukrainian Anti armour weapons than western stuff.
I am just surprised how many attacks they need per bridge to do structural damage.
If the Russians were going to bring down an Orc bridge I rather suspect Uragan or Smerch would not be any where near the top of their list as weapons of choice... you need aviation bomb level power... so an Iskander perhaps or if you can get close enough 203mm or 240mm calibre artillery... but then Kh-29 with its 320kg HE warhead would also do the job too.