Russia's War Against Ukraine

[FarAway Sooner]

We and the Russians continue to play games of "chicken" over the Black Sea. 

Reapers aren't cheap, but I suspect that one thing we've learned from modern, high-intensity warfare is that expensive drones like Reapers are a lot better suited to low-intensity conflict in counterinsurgency ops.  I'm a little surprised that a jet could collide with anything bigger than a basketball and both vehicles didn't end up in the ditch.

[Gusington]

From Politico:

**

The narrative that Ukraine's military is headed toward certain victory against Russia has recently taken quite the hit.

Two weeks ago, NPR's FRANK LANGFITT reported that both Ukraine and Russia have torn through their best-trained and most-experienced troops. After a year of fighting, both forces now rely heavily on conscripts — a development that favors Russia since Moscow has more people it can call up than Kyiv.

Then Monday evening, the Washington Post's ISABELLE KHURSHUDYAN, PAUL SONNE and KAREN DeYOUNG dug even deeper, reporting that pessimism and fear is sweeping through Ukrainian ranks.

KUPOL, a lieutenant colonel, told the Post that his battalion is "unrecognizable" from the group he started out with. "Of about 500 soldiers, roughly 100 were killed in action and another 400 wounded, leading to complete turnover. Kupol said he was the sole military professional in the battalion, and he described the struggle of leading a unit composed entirely of inexperienced troops."

"We don't have the people or weapons," a senior Ukrainian official also told them. "And you know the ratio: When you're on the offensive, you lose twice or three times as many people. We can't afford to lose that many people."

**

Oh shit.

[GDS_Starfury]

what makes you think you haven't been?

[MengJiao]

From Politico:

**

The narrative that Ukraine's military is headed toward certain victory against Russia has recently taken quite the hit.

 As victories go, Ukraine won a big one as soon as they decided to fight the initial invasion and then more victories when they crushed the invading forces and then a few more when they took back big parts of their territory.

  So yes, how this war is going to end is still very much up in the air, but stopping the Russians and then inflicting heavy losses and taking territory back and holding on in the face of what would seem to be the best
the Russians can do offensively, does seem promising in the sense that the Russians aren't going anywhere any time soon.  I do have the sense that the Ukrainians would do well to hang on for the moment and not take any risks precisely because they are definitely ahead in terms of victories.  But again, I at least, have no clear idea how this all will end except that it is likely to:
a) go on in some form for years
b) end up with some kind of supervised demilitarized zone
c) not end with the collapse of Russia
d) not end with a clear Ukrainian victory
e) of course, I'm usually wrong

[JasonPratt]

{From the US-EUCOM} Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.

"HOW DARE THEY BE ENVIRONMENTALLY UNSOUND!"   

As for being unprofessionally reckless... well, if you're a pilot trying to soft-kill a drone, I don't know what else could be tried, short of secret short-range high-intensity EW tech, which even if they had they wouldn't want to use on a drone without being dead sure the drone wouldn't survive to transmit any detection of the attempt. I rather admire the pilot for trying hard, and succeeding!

[JasonPratt]

what makes you think you haven't been?

...I feel like some words are missing there. Was this about smoking accidents involving JDAMS? 

[JasonPratt]

Here's a (Daily?) Telegraph article talking about the possibility of Putin using Bakhmut as a convenient way to reduce the political influence of the Wagner mercs.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-next-civil-war-has-already-begun/ar-AA18CKhn?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=1c4cc5cdc3a54dafbfee482ace21d511&ei=23

[MengJiao]

{From the US-EUCOM} Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.

"HOW DARE THEY BE ENVIRONMENTALLY UNSOUND!"   

As for being unprofessionally reckless... well, if you're a pilot trying to soft-kill a drone, I don't know what else could be tried, short of secret short-range high-intensity EW tech, which even if they had they wouldn't want to use on a drone without being dead sure the drone wouldn't survive to transmit any detection of the attempt. I rather admire the pilot for trying hard, and succeeding!

  Not exactly a soft kill, ramming it or bumping into it -- which by the way has been a technique for hard-killing drones since the days when you could wing-flip a V1 (once the V1 was upside down, its gyroscopic system would dive it into the ground in an effort to correct its altitude).

  I'm not sure how dumping fuel on a drone would knock down the drone.  Maybe the fuel dump was a way to make the attacking plane more responsive to the small control changes needed to bump the drone.

  Or so they could see the slip-stream from the drone -- with 19 runs at the drone they had plenty of time to think about what might happen if they misjudged knocking it down and crashed themselve doing it -- which would be pretty embarrassing I woould think.

[Gusington]

I interpreted the fuel dumping as symbolic...literally taking a dump on the U.S. and the West.

[JasonPratt]

I interpreted it as hoping the drone's engine temps would combust. Though symbolism works, too, to be fair.

[W8taminute]

From what I heard dumping fuel on the drone scrambled it's detection and scanning gear. 

I remember a number of years ago an incident in which a Russian plane expelled fuel onto a US fighter jet in an attempt to compel the pilot to do something rash.


EDIT: For fun try spilling gasoline (a solvent) onto your powered up computer motherboard and see what happens.

[Gusington]

^NOT RECOMMENDED

[bobarossa]

^NOT RECOMMENDED

Unless you want to get a faster computer and this will give you a good excuse for the wife (unless you let her in before the fumes dissapate).

[JasonPratt]

"I think some computers just spontaneously detonate, dear! -- the heat turns the inside into solvent! We need a computer with REALLY good cooling this time..."

[JasonPratt]

Pretend I wasn't too lazy to create a version of the meme: Russia and China are walking along the sidewalk, but China turns around to check out the finer Qatar who just walked past them while Putin looks insulted!

Now that you have this famous meme photo in mind...

If China itself can survive long enough to get onto Qatar's natural gas, Russia practically loses its biggest trading partner to keep itself and its expansion policies solvent.

(Despite the clickbaity thumbnail title, Qatar isn't doing this to stop Russia's border invasions.)