The war in Ukraine

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dmereifield
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by dmereifield »

Why has Ukraine denied responsibility, then?

new guy
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by new guy »

dmereifield wrote: 04 May 2023, 15:33 Why has Ukraine denied responsibility, then?
Why not?

Caribbean
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Caribbean »

I think it's far more likely that this was a private effort connected with the $500,000 prize for landing a drone in Red Square on May 9th, with "Slava Ukraini" written on it. It looked a bit like a firework, so probably used black powder for the "warhead".

Just testing the air defences :)
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NickC
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by NickC »

IRIS-T - first system del'd to Ukraine last October and has shot down over 60 targets .Videos have shown how these missiles have engaged and destroyed missiles like the Kalibr (Russian Tomahawk) amid heavy Russian barrages and the Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drones. One big plus is it can share information from its radar with “neighboring” air defense systems. Expect Ukrainians will site alongside their Patriot batteries now being delivered.

https://eurasiantimes.com/new60-aerial- ... says-iris/
Presume graphic spec is the IRIS-T SLM(medium range) latest variant.
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Phil Sayers
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Phil Sayers »

Speculation that Storm Shadow is imminent and a confident statement that they could be fired by Ukraine's existing aircraft:

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TheLoneRanger

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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Phil Sayers »

Apparently, already been sent. Just a dozen would have a decent chance of wrecking the Black Sea Fleet HQ, several warships in port and the remainder of the Kerch Bridge although I suspect Ukraine will pick less high profile targets:


bobp
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by bobp »

Phil Sayers wrote: 11 May 2023, 12:27 Apparently, already been sent. Just a dozen would have a decent chance of wrecking the Black Sea Fleet HQ, several warships in port and the remainder of the Kerch Bridge although I suspect Ukraine will pick less high profile targets:


Taking out the Kerch Bridge would mess up the Russian Supply route.

new guy
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by new guy »

Phil Sayers wrote: 11 May 2023, 12:27 Apparently, already been sent. Just a dozen would have a decent chance of wrecking the Black Sea Fleet HQ, several warships in port and the remainder of the Kerch Bridge although I suspect Ukraine will pick less high profile targets:

Given that we only have 800, I believe that the few they get should be used to the best disrupted effect.
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sunstersun

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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by sunstersun »

I'm willing to bet good money the counteroffensive starts in May.

Call it spiritual juju, but against Russia, June summer offenses have bad luck.

also, any amount of long range weaponry has a positive passive effect on the Russian war machine. It's like the air version of fleet in being.

Phil Sayers
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Phil Sayers »

So far today Russia has lost two fast jets and two helicopters which is on top of a helicopter yesterday. This is causing real panic in Russian military circles; not just because of the number downed but specifically where they have been downed - Crimea yesterday (although that was said to be due to technical faults) and Russia itself today, not particularly close to the border:







Russian military commentators are in panic mode with their theories being:

1. The devastating Storm Shadow attacks on targets in Luhansk City today and yesterday have made Russian SAM operators very nervous such that they are engaging everything they can see, primarily their own aircraft. The use of US supplied decoy missiles in the Storm Shadow attacks has probably contributed to that.

2. Western countries have given permission that the SAMs they have supplied can be used to down aircraft heading to Ukraine while they are still over Russia.

3. Ukrainian special forces have crossed the border with a load of MANPADS and have set up camp under the ingress and egress routes.

NickC
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by NickC »

Re recent Sunak and Zelensky meeting at Chequers, mention made of shipping hundreds of air defence missiles, wondering if referring to CAMM, there was talk last year of sending Sky Sabre to Ukraine, but have seen no confirmation any sent or seen any tweets mentioning Sky Sabre (an Army Sky Sabre battery was sent to Poland with 100 troops).
Does anyone know?

PS Germany has just pledged an additional four additional Iris-T SLM systems including 12 SLS launchers and 200 missiles plus Hensoldt has also won a €100+ contract to supply six additional TRML-4D air-defense radars to Ukraine (as used with Iris-T SLM battery). TRML-4D is an AESA GaN radar capable of detection and tracking of about 1,500 targets in a radius of up to 250 km.

https://www.hensoldt.net/fileadmin/user ... review.pdf

Phil Sayers
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Phil Sayers »

If these really do have explosive power equivalent to an artillery shell then the Russians will have an enormous headache shortly, not least because we can keep on churning them out until the cows come home while evolving the design along the way:



If they work as is claimed in the Telegraph then really we should be ordering a few thousand for ourselves as well. The downside is that this sort of thing will probably lead to a global 'drone race' where countries hold larger and larger stockpiles to overwhelm air defences.

albedo
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by albedo »

Phil Sayers wrote: 16 May 2023, 16:56 If they work as is claimed in the Telegraph then really we should be ordering a few thousand for ourselves as well. The downside is that this sort of thing will probably lead to a global 'drone race' where countries hold larger and larger stockpiles to overwhelm air defences.
That is surely inevitable anyway. Do we have any realistic option but to compete in the race.

sunstersun
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by sunstersun »

Patriot putting in heavy work doing a great job.

Little J
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Little J »

Probably a silly question, but how are we going to train Ukraine pilots on an aircraft that we haven't ever operated?

Caribbean
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Caribbean »

By employing and using instructors who have trained pilots on those aircraft?

Plenty of qualified people who would be happy to actually fly in Ukraine, but who would be classified as "mercenaries" if they did. However by acting as instructors outside the theatre of war, they stay on the right side of the Laws of War.
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Little J
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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Little J
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Little J »

See, I told you it was a silly question :mrgreen:

Timmymagic
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Timmymagic »

Caribbean wrote: 16 May 2023, 22:12 By employing and using instructors who have trained pilots on those aircraft?

Plenty of qualified people who would be happy to actually fly in Ukraine, but who would be classified as "mercenaries" if they did. However by acting as instructors outside the theatre of war, they stay on the right side of the Laws of War.
Like the International Legion if they signed a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces they would not be mercenaries....

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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Timmymagic »

new guy wrote: 11 May 2023, 18:14 Given that we only have 800, I believe that the few they get should be used to the best disrupted effect.
We might have 800...but both the UK and France were planning on reducing their stockpile and had based the recent MLU requirements around those reductions (UK dropping from c800+ to c400+, with France dropping from c400+ to c100+).

If those numbers haven't changed, and there hasn't been an announcement with the MLU programme well underway at present, and no public contract announcement from MBDA (which would be required under stock market rules...)....then c400 missiles from the UK and c300 missiles from France are soon to be out of life and will need to be disposed off....naturally there would be some risk to that....for example the respective MoD's might be looking to extend the MLU contract, do a more limited MLU on the remaining missiles (i.e. just relife rather than upgrade as well) or retain the remaining non-MLU stock until end of life to try and maintain as big a stock as possible in the short term.

Or we might just think sod it...the old missiles can go out with a blaze of glory and actually destroy the Russian targets they were supposed to in the first place....there is a good argument that their expenditure now reduces the need for them in the medium to long term...

Timmymagic
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Timmymagic »

Phil Sayers wrote: 16 May 2023, 16:56 If they work as is claimed in the Telegraph then really we should be ordering a few thousand for ourselves as well. The downside is that this sort of thing will probably lead to a global 'drone race' where countries hold larger and larger stockpiles to overwhelm air defences.
We, as in the collective 'West', should have been doing this for the last 12 months....

We could very easily produce 500 basic, Shahed style, drones per day...and supply them to Ukraine for military targets only.

The net effect would be Russia would lose the war within 6 months....

Why? Because Russian defence is based around its Air Defence system, mainly the missiles in its SAM systems. If you could send in 500 attack drones with ranges of up to 1000-1,500km (probably a mix, some shorter ranged, some longer, some armed, some decoys) you would force the Russian's to engage them....and over a period of 2-3 months completely exhaust their ex-Soviet stockpile of SAM's, plus their AAM's from fighters and seriously burn into their manned aircraft flight hours....

At some point the Russian's would have to make a very difficult decision about whether or not they actually engage the drones...or exhaust their SAM stockpile to such an extent that they are in effect defenceless (with no short-medium term ability to replenish those stockpiles, its debateable whether they could do it over the long term either...). You could hit every airbase, munitions stockpile, refinery, MIC facility, Chip making facility, research institute within 1,500km...which is the bulk of them in Russia....it would bring the Russian's to terms very quickly...
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Phil Sayers

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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Phil Sayers »

Yep, unending wave after wave of such drones would likely make pretty short work of the Russians. As Ukraine winning is the overriding priority right now we should do exactly that. However, the near inevitable consequence would be the likes of Iran and North Korea aiming for 100k similar drones in their inventories and Iran would also hand them out like confetti to their regional proxies. China would probably look for a million so as to be able to do to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea etc what they have just seen us do to Russia.

Timmymagic
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Timmymagic »

Phil Sayers wrote: 17 May 2023, 13:13 Yep, unending wave after wave of such drones would likely make pretty short work of the Russians. As Ukraine winning is the overriding priority right now we should do exactly that. However, the near inevitable consequence would be the likes of Iran and North Korea aiming for 100k similar drones in their inventories and Iran would also hand them out like confetti to their regional proxies. China would probably look for a million so as to be able to do to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea etc what they have just seen us do to Russia.
The difference with every country, with the exception of China, is that they don't have the budget to do so...or the ability to shield their stockpiles of such drones from long range strikes.

Directed energy weapons will also arrive before such an eventuality and reverse the cost equation in the opposite direction. But there was/is an opportunity to use it now...

Caribbean
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Caribbean »

Timmymagic wrote: 17 May 2023, 10:52 Like the International Legion if they signed a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces they would not be mercenaries....
I suppose a few F-16 pilots would be OK with $6-700 a month, but I'm guessing not many. That's an expensive skillset
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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Timmymagic
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Timmymagic »

Caribbean wrote: 18 May 2023, 15:04
Timmymagic wrote: 17 May 2023, 10:52 Like the International Legion if they signed a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces they would not be mercenaries....
I suppose a few F-16 pilots would be OK with $6-700 a month, but I'm guessing not many. That's an expensive skillset
Front line infantry men in Ukraine are on over 2,000 EUR per month...which is a lot in Ukraine.

For 20 or so F-16 pilots I'm sure the Ukrainian's could pay rather well...

Caribbean
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Re: The war in Ukraine

Post by Caribbean »

Timmymagic wrote: 18 May 2023, 16:51
Caribbean wrote: 18 May 2023, 15:04
Timmymagic wrote: 17 May 2023, 10:52 Like the International Legion if they signed a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces they would not be mercenaries....
I suppose a few F-16 pilots would be OK with $6-700 a month, but I'm guessing not many. That's an expensive skillset
Front line infantry men in Ukraine are on over 2,000 EUR per month...which is a lot in Ukraine.

For 20 or so F-16 pilots I'm sure the Ukrainian's could pay rather well...
And that's the problem. As soon as they pay more than regular members of the Ukrainian armed forces, they become mercenaries in international law.

I'm sure it could be done, but it would need to be done with great care, to comply with international law on "soldiers of fortune"
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

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