Russian special military operation in Ukraine #40

Second video is the one I wanted to post  

Any ideas what the foreign object is? What is the sensor tube under the Reaper?

Surprise surprise!

Tony
@Cyberspec1
·
2h
NATO C&C Europe Cavoli has reportedly canceled several MQ-9 Reaper missions scheduled for today.

The plans included 3 sorties of drones: from Italy in the direction of the Crimea, from Lithuania in the direction of Kaliningrad. And 3rd from Romania in the direction of Lvov.


I wonder what they are

Tony
@Cyberspec1
·
5h
The United States has taken measures to prevent the American MQ-9 Reaper drone that sank in the Black Sea from falling into the wrong hands, White House spokesman John Kirby said.


Meanwhile

Tony
@Cyberspec1
·
7h
The floating Crane "Chernomorets-3" has reportedly departed Sevastopol. There is speculation it's headed to the Reaper crash site. It's estimated it should reach the crash site by noon today (local time)

Tony
@Cyberspec1
If the audio files that have been posted online are legit, then the Russians have picked up at least part of the drone wreckage already.


Whilst a USN P-8 watches from a respectful distance

Alternative analysis number 37

Pepe Escobar
@RealPepeEscobar
·
5h
CONFIRMED

The $56 million US MQ-9 Reaper was launched from the Sigonella NATO base in SICILY. Heading to Crimea with transponder OFF.

Russian EW jammed it. Cut off its guidance satellite feed.

Crash.

Computer/telemetry memory chips scooped up by Black Sea Fleet.

A Polish general said that after Slovyansk and Kramatorsk are taken, the next defensive line will be on the Dneper.

Is he right or not?

Ukrainians can fight only in area where there either cities or woods.

Since donbass is full of empty fields then he is very likely right. The advancement of russian forces in such areas will be fast.

Just in case anyone still has any doubt that the US planned all this here is a 1 minute video from 2017 with Lindsey Graham & John McCain in Ukraine with Poroshenko.

One has to wonder how many of those in uniform in the audience are still alive.

The pilots which downed the drone.

Achtung ! Achtung ! Vasily Tsimbal is on the air !

The pod underneath the MQ-9 Reaper was apparently the Gorgon Stare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare

I doubt there will be many technological surprises when technicians deconstruct the aircraft (or what's left of it ...) but this pod, and if possible the ability to decompile the runtime, is something they sure want to analyze.

Apparently the system is able to analyze a 100m2 area using 368 camera and then identifies and classifies objects in real-time.

[edit]
The aircraft on the video looks like it has been equipped with the new NATO POD that was launched in November 2022.
https://www.ga.com/ga-asi-flies-new-multi-use-nato-pod-on-mq-9

The Gorgon Store apparently has two pods on each wing; one with the camera equipment and one with the brains and networking to process it.
[/edit]

Russian forces have established control over the settlement of Zaliznyanskoe, 03.15.2023.

The head of "Wagner" Prigozhin announced the capture of the village of Zaliznyanskoye near Artemovsk.

Wagner Group fighters have established control over the settlement of Zaliznyanskoye near Artemovsk, said the founder of the organization Yevgeny Prigozhin.

"Assault detachments are expanding the environment of Bakhmut (Ukrainian name for Artemovsk. - Approx. ed.)," his press service quoted the businessman as saying.

Zaliznyanskoye is located north of Artyomovsk, close to the highway linking that city with Slavyansk in Kyiv-controlled DPR territory.

Today, adviser to the acting head of the DPR, Yan Gagin, said that scattered Ukrainian units are trying to retreat from Artemovsk along country roads, losing equipment and incurring casualties due to spring thaws. According to him, the Russian military occupies about half of the city.

The day before, Zelensky’s office reported that after a meeting of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander, they decided to continue to hold Artemivsk. At the same time, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian troops, Valery Zaluzhny, called the defense of the city a key element in holding the entire front.

Artyomovsk is located in the Kyiv-controlled part of the DPR, north of the large city of Gorlovka. This is an important transport hub for supplying the Ukrainian group of troops in the Donbass. Fierce battles are going on for the city.

According to the latest reports, Russian forces have cut or taken under fire control all paved roads to Artemivsk, and the slush that has begun is seriously complicating the delivery of ammunition and personnel of Ukrainian troops.

https://ria.ru/20230315/zaliznyanskoe-1858016380.html

Russia will try to get the wreckage of the drone from the Black Sea, Patrushev said, 03.15.2023.

Patrushev: Russia will try to get the remains of an American drone that fell into the Black Sea.

MOSCOW, March 15 - RIA Novosti. Russia will try to retrieve the remains of an American drone that fell into the Black Sea, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev told journalist Pavel Zarubin on the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program.

“I don’t know if we will be able to get it or not, but the fact that we need to do this, and we will do it, is a must,” he said.

Patrushev added that he hoped for the success of the operation.

As the Secretary of the Security Council added, the incident with the drone once again confirms that the United States is directly involved in hostilities in Ukraine.

The director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, said that Russia has the technical capabilities to lift the wreckage.

“We know and understand in some detail what goals the Americans have in connection with intelligence activities, the use of technical means, and we are trying to identify those objects and territories that are of the greatest interest to them,” he added.

As White House spokesman John Kirby said today, Washington is not confident that it will be able to return the wreckage of the drone. At the same time, the United States does not want the remains of the drone to fall into the wrong hands, and is taking measures to prevent such a development.

https://ria.ru/20230315/bespilotnik-1858082104.html

The "measures" deployed by the US to stop Russia getting its hands on its drone junk must involve deployment of a 50 foot Bavaria style
yacht with some deep sea divers without a decompression chamber. They will beat the Russians to the wreckage for sure.

Putin did it!

Frankly the US can't do a thing. So everything they tell about securing/guaranteeing/etc. is bluff poker.

At most they can use a submarine - if nearby - with divers to extract the most important technological pieces; e.g. the pods, solid state storage, boards, and maybe some hardware parts like optics but the aircraft is too big for salvage by divers alone. But sending your submarine and people in the lion's den with multiple Russian submarines patiently waiting to collect signal intelligence. I really argue whether one downed drone regardless of technology is worth the risk.

No, this one is going to be salvaged by Russia and they either discover very interesting technology (radar, optics or acquisition and signal processing software) that will be reverse engineered or discover that nothing on it was really as technologically advanced as the product brochure made it look like.

NORRIS!!!

More progress

That footage is clearly DCS world.

They really don't want to be caught napping do they?


Tom
@tom_username_
·
15h
This should make even Strelkov a little bit optimistic.

This is round-the-clock work. They're being built faster than Ukraine can even plan its offensive. By the time Ukraine and NATO simulate their offensive scenarios, Russia has already built additional lines of defence.

GarryB wrote:JSOW is an expensive gliding guided bomb.

Yeah I'm sure Grom is free in comparison.

Clearly every Grom ever hit it's target like this one. JSOW has basically equivalent range to the rocket assisted Grom with high altitude deployed.

But GROM would be much cheaper that JSOW.

U.S intended to use these JSOW along with other PGMs to target Russian armoured columns, especially MBTs. China too has armed its fighter jets with similar PGMs in order to target Indian tank columns. Therefore, Indian T-72s are receiving a Camouflage suite ( link to my previous post below). I think Russia should immediately issue similar Camouflage suits for their tanks so that NATO's chances of hitting Russian tank columns with PGMs goes down drastically.

https://www.russiadefence.net/t8908p150-russian-special-military-operation-in-ukraine-40#421207

Unpowered bombs are stupid. You factor in the cost of risking pilots and airframe making high risk maneuvers in the face of long range air defences to dump these bombs with as much energy as possible and suddenly that rocket doesn't seem so expensive anymore.

How Russia will get the secrets of the American drone, by Nikolai Gulyaev for VZGLYAD. 03.15.2023.

Russia has devices capable of lifting an American MQ-9 drone from the bottom of the sea.

The United States is concerned that its military may "never get hold" of an MQ-9 drone that crashed off the coast of Crimea. Why is the strongest American army in the world completely powerless in this case, what secrets can this UAV carry, and what difficulties will Russian specialists have to face?

“We have done everything to minimize the value of the downed MQ-9 from an intelligence point of view,” said White House spokesman John Kirby. “However, we are not sure that we will ever be able to raise this apparatus [from the bottom of the sea].”

Thus, the political leadership of the United States made it clear that they took extremely seriously the danger of the drone falling into “the wrong hands” - for example, the hands of the Russian military. And their fears were immediately confirmed by Russian officials.

“Russia will try to get the remains of an American drone that fell into the Black Sea,” said Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council. Moreover, there is reason to believe that the operation itself to raise the device (or its fragments) began on March 14, immediately after the incident with the MQ-9. Recordings of conversations between Russian sailors participating in the search for the apparatus appeared on a number of Telegram channels.

MQ-9 fell in close proximity to the Crimean coast, but the exact coordinates have not yet been publicly announced. Is it possible to assume that the United States is capable of undertaking some kind of special operation to lift it? With a high probability - no, and this, in fact, is what the confession of the representative of the White House says.

Firstly, for an underwater operation of this magnitude, special ships are needed, equipped with the appropriate equipment. Of course, they are at the disposal of the United States - only these are warships, and in accordance with the Montreux Convention, passage through the Bosphorus (to the Black Sea) during hostilities is prohibited. This means that American warships will not get there either.

Secondly, with a high probability, Russia will be able to organize such searches much earlier than the United States. “There are technical possibilities for this,” says Nikolai Patrushev.

“I can assume that the crashed American drone is located at a depth of about a kilometer. Russia really has deep-sea submersibles at its disposal that can lift it - not entirely, of course, but the wreckage can be found with a high probability, - Captain of the third rank of the reserve Maxim Klimov tells the VZGLYAD newspaper. “For example, the company Yuzhmorgeologia, which is known for lifting the black box of a crashed Tu-154 over the Black Sea, is able to do this.”

However, in Russia there are at least a few companies that have autonomous (uninhabited) vehicles capable of operating at the depths of the Black Sea. That is, at least up to three thousand metres.

State structures also have such devices, for example, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, not to mention the Russian Navy and the famous GUGI (Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research). The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, Sergei Naryshkin, also announced the technical feasibility of raising the apparatus.

Specialists in deep-sea research, with whom the VZGLYAD newspaper spoke, note that from a purely technical point of view, the main difficulty will not be to raise the apparatus (or its fragments), but to find it. Even if the exact location of the drone crash is known, most likely the point on the seabed where the MQ-9 is now located is somewhere off to the side. For searches and research, it will be necessary to take into account sea currents, as well as to attract specialized equipment - special underwater vehicles equipped with sonar.

It remains to answer the question - why raise this drone at all? Is the game worth the candle, because the operation to lift the apparatus can be very expensive? What secrets and secrets can it contain? What could Russian special services and engineers find in it?

According to the Pentagon, the MQ-9 was not armed, which means that it was performing a purely reconnaissance mission. But weapons systems in this case are not as critical as communication and information systems.

First of all, such a modern UAV contains numerous electronic systems and components, both built-in and replaceable. In particular, we are talking about communication systems, optical and electronic sensors, radars, transmitters and other similar devices.

Of course, after being in sea water, all of them will not be in working order, but even in this form they may be of interest to Russian intelligence.

Especially a lot of information can be gleaned by studying the control system of the device, its layout, architecture, engineering solutions, and even the materials used for the fuselage and planes.

And here it is worth returning to where exactly the wreckage of the fallen drone is located. The question is fundamental - if they are in Russian territorial waters, then the problem is only technical. In fact, these fragments become the property of the Russian state.

However, if the device is in international waters, everything changes. The drone would then remain the property of the United States, and an open attempt to retrieve it would cause an international scandal. Here we can recall the top-secret operation code-named "Azorian" to raise the Soviet nuclear submarine, carried out by the United States in 1974. The operation was kept in deep secrecy precisely because of the restrictions on working with someone else's (in this case, Soviet) property located on the ocean floor.

Statements by Russian officials about the possibility and desirability of raising the MQ-9 are highly likely a sign that the drone is located precisely in Russian terrorist waters, under full control, including the Russian Navy. So, most likely, the specialists of the Russian military-industrial complex really have every chance to learn the secrets of the American drone, and on a completely legal basis.

https://vz.ru/society/2023/3/15/1203280.html

Mig-31 with Su-24. Odd combo.

Anyways, if F-35s are getting this close ( odd behaviour for a stealth aircraft) then Mig 31s need to be heavily armed with BVR A2A missiles.