Russian special military operation in Ukraine #55

thegopnik wrote:I give up. I will take a month off from this thread.
This war has taught me life is easier to be a high ranking Russian army military official than it is for Navy or Airforce because you will get less scolding.

i get that people without service experience might look at this like that.

but do know that these AD crews need to make split-second decisions to open fire or not before the target might disappear again from their screens.

They are just punching in targets and fire as fast as they can on as many targets as possible.
There is no time to call their AF liaison to ask where their birds are, or ask permission to engage or take their time trying to positive ID the targets.

RF aircraft are flying themselves with as little as electronics on that might give them away to the NATO assets observing off the coast.

It is not the pilot's fault either, he is trying best too under the circumstances. He knows the AD is there and will engage targets in a split-second decision notice. But he accepted the risks in order to do his job.
He is a combatant, turning away while missiles are inbound is something what most of us consider in a not too positive light.

Critisism where critisism is due, but i really do not see neither the AD or pilot should have acted otherwise.
i really do not see this trough rose-colloured glasses either.
I got my own contacts out there in the war i rather want to see make it home alive.

But this is war, and it is not pretty and it involves less than perfect decisions that need to be made.

Lets just be happy it is just hardware that is lost.
You can replace hardware, you can not replace lives.

thegopnik wrote:I give up. I will take a month off from this thread.

This war has taught me life is easier to be a high ranking Russian army military official than it is for Navy or Airforce because you will get less scolding.

I'll show you some math, when the war completed 392 days, on March 22 last year, Shoigu stated that the VKS had already made 140,000 combat sorties which gives an average of 357 combat sorties per day. If VKS managed to maintain this pace today they must have already completed 272,000 combat sorties. Let's assume that Russia lost 15 aircraft to friendly fire, this would correspond to only 0.005% of the total number of combat sorties!
Do you want to leave this thread?
Good! Because I don't think people who freak out about Russia committing friendly fire only 0.005% of the time have much to contribute to this thread anyway.

So the IFF glitch rate is 5 in 100000. But I do not think there were 15 friendly fire cases involving jet losses. So we are likely closer
to 1 in a 100000. That is rather good since it is not a device working under ideal conditions but in a complex environment. I think
there must be some human error involved.

It's still too much considering the area where it happens are unreachable by the ukrainians so the AD should know what they fire at is 99.9% a russian aircraft.

!! Plenty of power plants hit during the night accross Ukraine.

Russians are finally fighting for real like in a real war and not trying to hit some transformaters only. Ukrainian situation just got 100 times worse with less and less electricity.

Isos wrote:!!  Plenty of power plants hit during the night accross Ukraine.

Russians are finally fighting for real like in a real war and not trying to hit some transformaters only. Ukrainian situation just got 100 times worse with less and less electricity.

Why only now?

Karl Haushofer wrote:

Isos wrote:!!  Plenty of power plants hit during the night accross Ukraine.

Russians are finally fighting for real like in a real war and not trying to hit some transformaters only. Ukrainian situation just got 100 times worse with less and less electricity.

Why only now?

How many times this have to explain. The war is not about qonquering territory, it is desytroying enemys army and will to fight. Where the battles are fought the logistics is very convenient for russians. If all those bridges and electrical stations would have been blown up, the fighting has already beeing shifted towards west, because there would have had been any troops capable of fighting in current positions. Russians would have been forced to stretch their own logistics and made easier logisticks of ukrops.

There is also humanitarian reasons because this is "not-war" and there is also political reasons. The politics is behind the idea that this war will be solved diplomatically with minor lost area for Ukraine and security guarantees are agreed. This is the weakest link IMHO of russians way of thinking. Those who desperately wanted this war to start are not willing to negotiate a shit as long as they are not dying by themselves.

Finally, now the order has been given to conquer those areas, spring is coming and nearly all availlable units and supplies of Ukraine are brought on the front. Now it is time to lock them where they are,east of Dnieper. It may happen, that electricity will be cut, bridges are blown and real meatgrinder chew the army of Ukraine without mercy and without any salvation.

ALAMO wrote:

Isos wrote:!!  Plenty of power plants hit during the night accross Ukraine.
Russians are finally fighting for real like in a real war and not trying to hit some transformaters only. Ukrainian situation just got 100 times worse with less and less electricity.

There is another side to this story.
Ukrainian railway transport is heavily dependent on electricity.
Only about 15% of locomotives they operate are diesel ones. All the others are electric.
What's more, those are needed on this part of a railroad net that is not being electrified - more than half of the whole structure.
And they won't get new ones even if entire west would shit their pants and strip.
Different gauge.
Taking out electricity seriously damages Ukro logistics.

That's what ? 100 locomotivs. They can target them with gerans and totally destroy their railway logistics.

Is it really proven that Zircons are used from ground launchers?
The truth is, I don't remember seeing any official images or reports.

Zircons essentially replace the older Onyx missiles and would be launched from the same launchers they currently use for Onyx... which is both ground launched and ship and sub launchers... the land based Onyx launcher is called Bastion and the sea based launcher is the UKSK vertical launch system for ships and subs.

It's a su-27, not produced anymore. IMO it's an old unmodernized version that was used to hunt maritime drones there.

An old Su-27 would mean it was one of the Navy aircraft they still have... rather obsolete, but good enough for flying around port shooting down drones and incoming Euro stealthy cruise missiles.

Since the beginning of military aviation, there have been casualties due to friendly fire.
It's not at all unusual for it to happen.

Something the Russia haters ignore is that on the other side there are Ukrainian soldiers who actually intentionally shoot their own troops if they happen to be withdrawing without permission... I would suggest that this is decidedly worse.

The losses of "sophisticated" western planes to friendly fire in the Iraq war were much higher.
In a low intensity conflict with the enemy Air Force nearly non existent.

And the civilian casualties to Russian military attacks has probably been the lowest of any conflict ever...

It's still too much considering the area where it happens are unreachable by the ukrainians so the AD should know what they fire at is 99.9% a russian aircraft.

Not really. If we are talking 357 combat sorties a day then that is 714 flights out and back for the aircraft... now add to that friendly missile launches that go out and obviously don't come back but also drones that go out and come back... the airspace is going to be rather busy and your time to decide one way or another is rather short... is it an Su-27 or is it a storm shadow... or maybe a Neptune.

US Sailors on a state of the art US AEGIS cruiser with a radar set so damn amazing it could identify an aircraft by counting the number of blades in its jet engine... they mistook a climbing Airbus for a descending F-14 coming in to attack them and they shot that airliner down.

They were in Iranian waters at the time and killed over 250 people and the guy who launched the missile and the captain of the ship got medals.

Why only now?

Hitting the electricity grid before would not have been as effective as hitting it now... winter is rather over and the weather should be warming up so it is less likely to kill civilians with the power outages, but they know winter comes again next year which creates pressure.... winter is coming...

Putin thought that holding back gives him some moral high ground. The US would’ve destroyed all their infrastructure in the weeks without second thought. Putin cost Russia thousands of  soldiers by holding back

New old news

The SBU was bombed again in Kherson

They write that somewhat strange warriors lived in this building, on the back of their camouflage they had signs with the inscription “SBU”, but the residents heard some of them communicating in an incomprehensible language, maybe it was Romanian, maybe something else similar to it .

Perhaps they were foreign mercenaries, the Kherson resistance shares information.

And on the night of March 20, these “SBU officers” arrived, so much so that they were taken out in ambulances all morning, and the place was cordoned off so that God forbid no one would see such losses. IlRusso reports

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJycVmsWEAEplhf?format=jpg&name=900x900

Power loss in the west now.

Burshtynska and Ladyzhynska thermal power plants in Ukraine have been seriously damaged and put out of operation, it will take years to restore them — the executive director of the Ukrainian energy holding DTEK, Dmytro Sakharuk

@ukraine_watch

Here is a good bang for Eater Not seen a smoke plume quite like this before.

Looks as if it could be sub surface, limiting the plume spread whilst accelerating its upward speed.

Enemy positions in the area of ​​Velikaya Pisarevka, Sumy region, were struck by ODAB-1500

A thick column of smoke rises at the arrival site.
- RVvoenkor

A mix I assume of French and Danish stocks. This may be termed as 'going all in'.

France may soon supply Ukraine with 78 Caesar howitzers

As the country's Minister of Defense Lecornu stated, an agreement has been reached between France, Ukraine and Denmark and this will allow for quick delivery.

@ukr_leaks_eng

MD
@distant_earth83
What’s unusual about the massive strike on targets in Ukraine on the night of March 28-29?

A wide range of weapons was used for the strikes: cruise missiles Kh-101 and Kh-555, hypersonic missiles Kh-47M2 “Kinzhal,” ballistic missiles of the Iskander-M complex, cruise missiles Kh-59, cruise missiles “Kalibr,” and “Harop” kamikaze drones.

Emphasis was placed on the use of UAVs, and the overall number of “Harop” drones used in each attack on Ukrainian positions significantly increased (about 65 drones were used in this strike). As before, UAVs serve two functions: to expose air defense systems and to strike targets.

The strike occurred just a week after the previous air raid, during which the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Station’s generating capacities were almost completely destroyed.

In Kamianske (Dnipropetrovsk Oblast), the Dnipro Thermal Power Plant, the Prydniprovska Thermal Power Plant, and the “Prometheus” 330 kV substation were presumably attacked.

Also presumably affected were the Srednedniprovska Hydroelectric Station (however, there is no reliable information about damage yet) and the “Pavlohradska” 330 kV substation. In Kryvyi Rih, repeated strikes, presumably, were carried out against the Kryvorizka Thermal Power Plant and nearby substations.

After the strikes in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, an emergency mode of operation was introduced in the power system.

Also, apparently, there was a repeat attack on the Burshtyn Thermal Power Station in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

A repeat flight was recorded to the gas pumping station in the city of Stryi (Lviv Oblast), where the largest underground gas storage facility in Ukraine is located.

From a military and tactical point of view, the strike also has several features.

For firing “Kalibrs,” presumably, a submarine of the Black Sea Fleet was used.

The Kh-101 cruise missiles traveled about 2,200 km to the targets in Western Ukraine after launch.

It is noteworthy that the combat work on power grids is gradually becoming systematic. It is possible that strikes will continue: the cascade of hydroelectric power stations upstream of the Dnipro (including the Kyiv energy node with hydroelectric power stations) is still functioning, and the remaining nuclear power plants in Ukraine have not yet been isolated.

It is too early to make final conclusions about the results of the strikes—the full effect of cruise missiles and drones will be understood by the beginning of the next autumn.

At the moment, it can be said that knocking out generating capacities, which the Russian army refrained from doing for a long time, will inevitably affect the industrial production of Ukrainian enterprises on both banks of the Dnipro River and (if the strikes continue) will affect the capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to use railway transport to redeploy reinforcements.

Karl Haushofer wrote:Putin thought that holding back gives him some moral high ground. The US would’ve destroyed all their infrastructure in the weeks without second thought. Putin cost Russia thousands of  soldiers by holding back

...but won the hearts and minds of the Global South, and the acceptance by the rest of the BRICS+

Murkhans play checkers... you know the rest.

Victor vicktop55
@vicktop55
Military expert Alexander Zimovsky: "Experts in big energy report that Russia has found vulnerabilities in Ukraine's technological infrastructure — underground gas storage facilities.
Russian air strikes on these Ukrainian infrastructure facilities have become a powerful response to the attacks of Russian refineries."

Russia continues to "fight to response." It's time for Russia to show the West what a real escalation is.

https://t.me/vicktop55/23244