Russian special military operation in Ukraine #29

Hole wrote:The Lancet strike against S-300PS

To put this in perspective, this Russian drone strike on the Ukrop S-300PS unit was what the Syrian jihadis (with clandestine NATO support) had tried at Khmeimim many dozens of times, but without any successes as their drones were always taken down by Russian AD.

Looks like Russia can succeed where the Forces of Darkness cannot.

If this is true, 9k soldiers are definitely not enough to start again from the side of Belarus.Of course, this number may increase quickly

Arrow wrote:If this is true, 9k soldiers are definitely not enough to start again from the side of Belarus.Of course, this number may increase quickly

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1581613515286413312?s=20&t=Vz7yLdpeVJ9pd5udI4-Nrg

In Belarus, called the number of Russian military in a joint grouping of troops with the Russian Federation

The head of the department of international military cooperation of the Belarusian Defense Ministry , Valery Revenko, said that a little less than 9,000 Russian military personnel would be part of the joint regional grouping of forces (RGV) in Belarus, TASS reports .

He noted that the first echelons with Russian servicemen, who are part of the regional group, began to arrive on the territory of the republic. The redeployment will take several days, Revenko specified.

Earlier, the President of Belarus said that neither Belarus nor Russia wants an escalation, but are forced to respond to the actions of the West and defend themselves.

On October 19, Lukashenka announced the creation of a joint group of troops with Russia "in connection with the aggravation on the western borders of the Union State."

According to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Belarus Viktor Tumar, the basis of the joint grouping of forces will be Belarusian units "according to the peacetime staff." He stressed that the regional grouping of troops of the Union State is an exclusively defensive project.

https://www-gazeta-ru.translate.goog/army/news/2022/10/16/18808099.shtml?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en

Early on in the campaign there was a strike on a BUK which I thought was a decoy as the heat sources seems to come from the radar cone and the fins if I'm not mistaken? >>

The white dot in the middle is just the tracker/marker. I recall the explosion was quite spectacular though?

That is a black and white normal video image... you can tell by the shadow...

The fins and cone look bright because they are white.

Quite right but it does look like an IR image of the target though?

The shadow is too dark for thermals.

I would put my money for B&W camera

Smaller and cheaper and often give a clearer view of some targets that colour video images.

The political and economic damage will be done anyway, the EU is done without gas, and going slow in Ukraine has no relationship with gas supplies - It is only Putin offering to keep supplying Europe with gas

The actual goal is not to destroy the EU... the goal is to make them realise Russia is not their enemy... the US and its proxy forces like the Orcs are.

Even if the EU freeze this winter and the next, they are still Russias neighbours and a very large block of countries with quite a few people.

Even if they just sell them a little food and a small amount of gas their remaining gas pipes allow it is income for Russia.

What other countries think, has nothing to do with Russian Security priorities, if China or India wish to believe lies from west its their issue - have they stopped trading with the west ?

If they don't respect Russia then there can be no decent fair trade relations... which the west wants, because their goals are to isolate and limit Russia.

As they trade more with Russia they will find Russia is not controlling and not demanding and wont demand they vote a certain way or change their culture to suit western beliefs.

No, and Modi and certain Chinese keep saying that there should be peace ...makes me think they just want to benefit from this situation by increasing their trade standing with Russia, as well as using the west.

Everyone wants peace except the US and Kiev.

Russia benefits from peace, but not at any cost... certainly not any terms the US or Kiev would find acceptable so the only choice for now is war.

Yes putin made a hard choice, and so did the thousands of Russians in Donbass , and so did Dugina, and so did murdered pro Russians

Putin can't just rule with his gut feeling, wars have serious consequences and the fact that it took him so long to start this conflict that has been going on since 2014 shows he was not willing to just throw Russian soldiers lives away for nothing or for an agenda or ideology.

So I don't feel sorry for Putin at all, not when it's not his life on the line and there really isn't any reason to finish off Ukraine

He is not asking for any ones sympathy, he will be upset at the waste that is war and conflict, but equally he knows sending in a 2 million strong army wont fix this either.

As for doing everything right, I think there would be low casualties if they just started to hit Ukrainian infrastructure and crippled their ability to fight back

They have been, or do you mean civilian infrastructure?

If you mean civilian infrastructure the west would be screaming about a humanitarian disaster and wanting to send in peace keepers from Kiev approved countries... do you think they will want Cook islanders and Fijians?

After all, doesn't he say himself he has no plan to take more land? So what difference does it make ?

He didn't "take" any land.

He didn't send in the troops and put a flag in the ground and declare this place to be Russia. He sent in troops to push the Orcs back and then the locals organised referendums and they decided... the something similar happened in Crimea though rather than pushing back the Orcs the locals did that and the Russian troops just came in and kept the peace while referendums were held and the people decided for themselves.

I would think after Russian forces have pushed the Orcs back out of artillery range from the new Russian regions that the locals in these regions might take the opportunity to hold their own referendums... including in Odessa and probably quite a few other regions who want to be run by people who will rebuild the economy and fix things.

Monday started off great, then he came out and said there was no need for massive strikes

What is it then?

No. What he said was there was currently no need for the upscaled attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure to continue... in other words you have been punished... don't do it again or next time it will be worse.

I have already stated how this ends, that the leaders don't want to understand it, and would let this drag on until more Russians die, or until other infrastructure is hit, or until Kiev regime hits Russian people with a bio weapon, is evidence of the ineptitude of the leadership cadre

You have given your opinion, but in their view dragging this thing on allows them to minimise losses of their own while maximising enemy losses, which is about the most ideal situation for Russian soldiers.

Hold talks for what ? Again - examine this war, and why it is happening... it started with Putins offer for talks ... to which the west flew 10+ cargo loads of weapons to the nazi regime

No talks

Talks offer an opportunity to see what they are thinking and if their position is changing at all.

Holding talks or not holding talks does not effect anything really.... there are no ceasefire agreements for these talks to be held.

Trust me , most Russians prefer a Stalin right about now, its not comfortable being in mobilization mode and knowing a car, bridge or building could blow up with your friends, Parents, Siblings, and loved ones inside

Going hard core and murdering more Ukrainians to try to get this done faster might only increase the risk of terrorism.

So level Ukraine and end this now

Why do you assume that would end things?

And they will provoke Russia to take those strikes, only the next provocation might not be one that Putin would survive

So why play these stupid games ? Or does he want to win a stupid prize?

It was a response to their attack and a warning attached... whether they understand it or not is another matter...

So get on with it then, me personally i dont believe starlink made such a difference anyway, in fact none of the western weapons did, most of the Kiev successes were done by IED

Starlink gave them C4IR communication on the battlefield front line... it was probably the key to their advancing so quickly.

Eliminating the enemies command and control network makes the difference between fighting an entire police force or fighting individuals scattered around the place... armed but unable to call for help.

So cut them off the gas, and leave them in time out, but Putin is offering them more gas... so which is it?

Cutting it off now and they will have some time to scramble for alternatives... even just wood stoves... cutting it off in mid winter... will have rather more effect.

I won't hold my breath, it's better better resolve things ourselves than to place our destiny in the hands of... that guy

I don't trust the Orange man either, but he is not as bad as the nutters in the Democrat party.

Okay so why is the statesman offering more negotiations ?

Never hurts to talk.

Then get on with it - this should be over with, Ukrainians are evil and have no intention to make a deal with Russia or to welcome us,

Things have to get a lot worse for the Ukraine before they can get better.

There will reach a point where no amount of western aide will help even to the hard core nutters... that will be when they start to leave in numbers like the rich people did.

Putin loves the west along with half of his security council, they want to be accepted at the table, he thinks they will eventually listen to his logic, and the truth is they consider him to be a joke

He knew as soon as Russian troops entered the Ukraine that there was no future for Russia with the west, and he has accepted that... listen to the speeches...

They must think he's stupid because even if they gave him a deal, they wouldn't give him what he wants

The scary thing is, he might take such a deal

You keep saying that... is that Gorby syndrome or Yeltsin syndrome... because it is not Putin Syndrome.

Only TORM2 can help here. Everything else, including Panzir, has a hard time, this Shahed 136 cannot get down reliably. It's a game changer. Iran developed it specifically.

A decent IADS should be able to spot them and with the variety of anti air weapons should be able to deal with them too... TOR and Pantsir are being used now but are rather big and heavy for the job... I would say Verba and SOSNA and even Kornet-EM would be valuable weapons for use against drones along with 57mm calibre AA guns with air burst shells and of course 30mm airburst cannon rounds too.

The newest range of armour used by Russia will include new EO systems that can track targets visually with or without IR signatures...

See meeting in May. Only there was the contract for this signed. If the drones had been asked earlier, we would have seen them and heard them in March. Other Iranian drones were only on site from June.

The Russians are producing their own Iranian drones, which means more than a few months negotiations...

Panzir already had bad -ups in Syria. Delia drones of the IDF etc. possible that it develops but TorM2 has 20 million US Dollar extra costs not without reason. The radar is simply better and the rockets too.

That version of Pantsir had the old search radar, the current model with the two faces doubles the scan rate and greatly increases the radar performance to find targets.

The main problem is that the missiles are huge and are overkill for most drones.

SOSNA and Kornet-EM make rather more sense, being cheaper and simpler and their optical guidance and laser beam guidance being precise and cheap and easy to mass produce.

The new mini Pantsir missiles and mini TOR missiles for anti drone use sound interesting, but so do the new mini SAMs they are developing for convoys and armoured groups to defend against rocket and tube artillery.

Pantsir is the reason we don't see Bayraktar TB2 flights anymore

Probably 100 Tb2 were destroyed by Pantsir alone

Anyway, without Rotax engines it will be hard to produce anymore tb 2

Got some good hits early in war against unimportant targets, but IADS of pantsir and Buk were too much for those systems

Including Tochka U, Bayraktar, HIMARS , Smerch , Uragan, and other such systems

Which is why now is a good time to send in large numbers of attack drones with recon drones observing the results in case follow up attacks are needed.

Sending them in earlier and they would have been shot down to easily, but now the enemy AD is thinner it will force them to use AD which can be further engaged with more drones and weakened even more.

Wouldn't a simple solution to a small engine's infrared signature be to constantly spray the exterior surface with methanol ?

Spraying it with water would make it less likely to burst into flames...

Very hot things show up well in thermals but even body temperature can be displayed as white and would stand out so it does not need to be super hot to stand out against the background of the sky...

4xSu-27 ? How have they survived so far?

Probably by being kept inside and not taken outside till now.

A lot of the FSB needs to be fired honestly.

Obviously, because the real problem is that there are too many FSB agents and not enough enemy for them to keep tabs on so firing FSB agents will just make it easier for the remaining FSB agents...

Iskander too expensive for mass production in huge numbers. Funny they could build such missiles easily but they invested in weapons they will never use like Burevestnik nuk missile or poseidon torpedo.

They have large numbers of Iskander operational and the missiles are in mass production.

Pretty dumb to remove Toshka from service also. It was a very good system and cheaper than iskander.

Even at 180km its range was too small and it is essentially the same as the Iskander except for the lack of range and lower flight speed making it easier to intercept. (easier but not easy).

Rob Lee
@RALee85
"An intelligence assessment shared in recent days with Ukrainian and U.S. officials contends that Iran’s armaments industry is preparing a first shipment of Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles, two well-known Iranian short-range ballistic missiles" to Russia

Rob Lee?

Are they also sending backpack nukes to Russia too?

I remember fanbois like you saying russian drones were wonderful and they produced hundreds of them until they ordered iranian stuff.

Russian drones don't have to be bad for them to buy foreign drones... Forepost... Orlan 10 is widely used.... it is probably the drone that are filming the Lancet attacks.

They don't have any drones at all and now they are using drones to film drone attacks and also find targets and determine if follow up attacks are needed.

Ukraine bombing the shit out of Belgorod. How many HIMARS do they have ? 10 ? What would happen if they face the hundreds of US himars ? They are defenceless against them. Ukraine firing in middle of the day accross the border and russia can't find them with the mighty Zala drones.

They need iranian satellites.

The amusing thing is that their amazing advances are being pushed back and their troops are dying in record numbers without advances made by them, so they take their HIMARS super weapons given to them by the west to save the day and they launch them at civilian targets inside Russian territory like they promised the US they wouldn't do.

You would think they would be hitting Russian military forces attacking their troops, but the mercs in charge of the HIMARS are not interested in helping their own troops, they want to exterminate Russian civilians.

Makes them sound very desperate... which is a good thing really.

And no, Tochka-U with it's 120 km range wouldn't solve the issue here, even if mass used. Too short ranged. It is already covered by the Tornado.

Late models 180km but your point still stands...

Surely, the people there must be asking why this had not been a priority to prevent. They have been shelled for 8years, enough is enough.

They have been shelled the last 8 years, but that was Ukrainians shelling Ukrainians... now it is different...

They will attack fixed targets but not HIMARS.

HIMARS rockets fired at Russian military targets get shot down before they arrive.

Even the ones fired at civilian targets are getting shot down in some numbers too.

Iskander isn't bad but that's not a weapon for mass use.

It is when you look at how many units are deployed with it.

Those fetah iranian BM are just improved soviet missiles. Russia made the error to phase them out and stop improving dumb cheap technology to have a decent mass used weapon.

Russia signed and complied with the INF treaty which banned the use of ballistic and cruise missiles of the intermediate and medium ranges.

We have the word of the Washington Post that Russia is buying ballistic missiles from Iran...

They had luna-M which is the bases of this iranian missile. They had the cheap Tochka.

FROG-7 only made sense with chemical or nuclear warheads, their lack of guidance made them not that useful except against large area targets like cities.

Instead they put money on useless Poseidon, a sub carrier for Poseidon, a nuclear missile...

The west is so confident in its beliefs regarding its own weapon superiority Russia needs these systems to obviously defeat any ABM system the US might scramble together with allies over the next decade or two... the weapons you mention will be critical to ensure the west is destroyed if it starts anything stupid.

They made lot of mistakes but aren't doing anything to correct them but keep lying themselves.

Their biggest mistake was ever thinking the west was what it pretends to be... but the US has cured them of that.

Russia wasn´t allowed to develop missiles of that range (at least officially) until 3(?) years ago. Sure, Iskander and Onyx can likely boost that range but the iranian missile is much, much, much cheaper.

They will likely be much easier to intercept, but the current state of Orc air defence that probably does not matter.

Distance from the borders of this range to the place where the missile fell in the Baiganinsky district of the Aktobe region of Kazakhstan is 627 km, and the actual launch distance, apparently, confidently exceeded 650 km, if not more - which, apparently, is the actual maximum range of ballistic missiles of the Iskander-M complex , de facto exceeding the officially declared range of 500 km. .

If the missile does not manouver then its flight range should be better than 500km, the expectation however is that if it doesn't manouver it will be shot down so the extra range is meaningless, while if it does manouver then it meets the rules.

It is many years since the INF agreement became null and void so plenty of time to upgrade the missiles to improve the performance of the fuel etc to increase range... remember it was 16 days after the INF expired that the Americans launched a Tomahawk cruise missile from their AEGIS Ashore sites in Europe which would also violate the INF treaty.

The Standard SM-6 missiles can be fitted with a nuclear warhead and already can fly more than 500km so it was a violation all along...

If this is true, 9k soldiers are definitely not enough to start again from the side of Belarus.Of course, this number may increase quickly

Sounds like a defensive grouping to prevent the Orcs from doing something stupid... again.

Russia has used all its top weapons like Iskabder, s400, kalibr and even kinzhal against targets in western Ukraine that is constantly monitored by NATO radars.

They already know what they need to know about them.

They even have catured iskander's dummy protections that are released in flight.

Exactly... they have captured and monitored all the information they need....

Now all they need to do is to develop a unified IADS that covers all HATO countries and is deployable to allies territories like Ukraine or Taiwan or newly invaded territories like Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan when needed...

That should only cost about 50 trillion and take 30 years to impliment... Sweden can't even share intel over the NS pipe attacks, and they want to work together as a military force?

Either way, like I said, these systems are not indestructible and so a few will get destroyed in conflict. It happens.

Of course, these systems are designed to operate as part of a network with overlapping mutual protection rings... anything on its own is vulnerable and the concentrated forces of an enemy should get some kills every once in a while.... doesn't happen very much though.

Classic....

Isos wrote:Iskander too expensive for mass production in huge numbers. Funny they could build such missiles easily but they invested in weapons they will never use like Burevestnik nuk missile or poseidon torpedo.

Pretty dumb to remove Toshka from service also. It was a very good system and cheaper than iskander.


Rob Lee
@RALee85
"An intelligence assessment shared in recent days with Ukrainian and U.S. officials contends that Iran’s armaments industry is preparing a first shipment of Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles, two well-known Iranian short-range ballistic missiles" to Russia

What can a Tochka do that a Smerch can't?

And Tochka missiles have reached their withdraw-by date. They're solid fuel, only lasting about 30 years or so.

I guess it's possible to revamp the facilities and produce new rockets; but for the same expense and trouble why not produce missiles for a new system instead?

Isos wrote:

JohninMK wrote:

Isos wrote:Ukraine bombing the shit out of Belgorod. How many HIMARS do they have ? 10 ? What would happen if they face the hundreds of US himars ? They are defenceless against them. Ukraine firing in middle of the day accross the border and russia can't find them with the mighty Zala drones.

They need iranian satellites.

Have you lost your brain overnight?

There will be a response.

They will attack fixed targets but not HIMARS.

And that's the whole point of a mobile long-range MLRS with precision-fire rounds

Do you suppose NATO will do any better against Smerches?

The Tochkas too have been giving trouble to Russia in terms of hunting them down. Because they can be fired, driven off and hidden.

Nevertheless they and the HIMARS are slowly being ground down, a system here a system there. And no terror strikes against Belgorod city or its civilian airport will change the course of events

Isos wrote:

LMFS wrote:Isos is trying to "punish" us with more and more evidence of the helplessness of the Russian military. I thought I would not need to ignore you dude, but you are now behaving like an outright troll, in case you have not noticed it.

I'm just sharing footage of the war. Isn't this thread about this ? Not my problem if you get upset seeing russian weapons not working as advertized.

Problem is that russian military is full of people like you and they ratger keep lying saying the weapons are 99% effective than admitting some sucks and they need to improve them, starting by their drones.

Iskander isn't bad but that's not a weapon for mass use. Those fetah iranian BM are just improved soviet missiles. Russia made the error to phase them out and stop improving dumb cheap technology to have a decent mass used weapon.

They had luna-M which is the bases of this iranian missile. They had the cheap Tochka.

Instead they put money on useless Poseidon, a sub carrier for Poseidon, a nuclear missile...

They made lot of mistakes but aren't doing anything to correct them but keep lying themselves.

What weapon doesn't work as advertised?

There is no such thing as an air defense system with 100% effectiveness and HIMARS shells have already been shown to be tricky customers. However, Tochka warheads too have gotten through about 5-10% of the time as well. And it only takes 5-10% of anything to get through for a pathetic troll such as yourself to use it as evidence of the ineffectiveness of whatever you want.

If a tank gets penetrated its ineffective
If an ATGM fails to penetrate a tank its ineffective
It a missile is intercepted en route to its target its ineffective
If the air defense system fails to intercept an incoming missile so its ineffective

It's boring and stale, this whole debate.

When everyone here was busy cheering the strikes against the Ukraine last week, 'finally' and 'that will show them', making all sorts of stupid memes - I did warn did I not, that at least as a deterrent or demonstration, such strikes are useless. That they will not deter anybody. Because the Ukrainian leadership, and its military leadership are run in one part by outright extremists, and on the other part - by people who have no responsibility to Ukrainian citizens because they don't have to live in the country anyway; their homes and money are in Europe while their kids study at British or Swiss boarding schools. Or they are outright foreign citizens.
What do such people care about Russia striking some power plants or whatever else? Only cutting power to Kiev might cause them to think twice.. but even then.

And indeed now we see a counter-escalation from the side of the Ukraine. Although if Russia is conducting the strikes indeed not to send any kind of message, but in preperation for an offensive - then a Ukrainian retaliation makes sense. Only who they're retaliating against doesn't. In fact they'll only serve to harden attitudes in Russia and increase support for mobilization.

My view therefore is that yet again, the Ukrainians are digging themselves into another hole. Let them. As to the Tochkas and HIMARS they're using - they'll be taken out with drones and counter-battery fire sooner or later if they keep at it. It's not a major military concern.

Arkanghelsk wrote:In the video it looks like the HIMARS hit a lone Pantsir vehicle that had run out of missiles

Most likely they overwhelmed the system

For me it shows only one thing :

A political / strategic failure, rather than a tactical / technological one

The only reason western fanboys can claim that a lone strike on a pantsir system in a small town like Belgorod is a "yuge attack"

Is because of the propaganda impact such strikes have

Indeed, the Russian army should have pushed them 300km from the border, and that is the price of giving up Izyum

As for GarryB: you said starlink was the reason for rapid advance of VSU-

I disagree, they did not advance rapidly, it took them 23 days to take Kupyansk and Liman

Against 1000 Rosgvardiya and Sobr forces

You know why they advanced at all? Because it was 20,000 of them vs 1000 police troops

So to correct , C4ISR from starlink had a minimal impact, but the ratio of manpower did have a huge impact

Now these strikes in Belgorod are played again as a failure of Russian weapons

And it is not Pantsir fault, that Ukros are volleying less than 70km from Belgorod -  it is the failure of Putin and the leadership to push back Ukraine 300km from the border to deny them strike ability so that systems are not overwhelmed at civilian airports

This is why we have trolls like Rob Lee passing this off - because of ineptitude to allocate proper troop numbers, and inability to create a buffer from Russian and Belarusian territory

Which yes massive strikes on civilian infrastructure would be needed, as they will need to clear cities on the border like Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, and others like Kiev in order to prevent Ukros from being in range of Belgorod, or Gomel

But if you want to let them hit Russian cities and not the other way around, sure keep supporting this leadership

So Mr. Smartass, how precisely do you propose to tackle this problem?

These 'massive strikes' again? I already made all my arguments as to why they will change nothing. But people like you will simply be cheering and celebrating should they happen, as indeed they did last week - only to then fly into a rage and a bout of suicidal doomerism over the Ukrainians scaling up their own attacks instead of being routed and scared off.
And then you'll go hunting for internal traitors again. Same old, same old.

Staying in Kharkov?
OK fine. But then you'll be flying into a rage about such strikes on Kharkov, or on Kherson, embarassing Russia.
Or indeed, if not on Belgorod, then on Kursk. If not on Kursk, then on Orel. If not on Orel, then on Bryansk. Because as you yourself admitted, you would not only have to occupy that same Kharkov region, but also Chernigov and Sumy.
And that will take a massive amount of troops, and steady casualties among them - who are better spent being prepared for a new offensive to conclude the war once and for all, as now.