Switchblade drones now in active use.
Ads for wartime mobilisation specialists, just for all those specialists sitting around. Usually flip burgers but now they get to do what they are really good at.
Next is ads for FPS Gamers.
“Want to apply your valuable skills in a realistic, dynamic and ultimately kinetic environment? Want to level up and impress the ladies? COD and Team Fortress 2 experience preferred. No Mario Kart or World of Warships experts need apply.”
Tanks are essential in a mobile defence and in the offencive.
Yep. Tanks need infantry with skill, morale and numbers sufficient to screen the tank from hand held rockets. Russia has conscripts who like to hide and let the tanks get killed.
So the post this morning on BB was correct, and beats out MSM yet again.
Good news for UKR too.
But HTF are we supposed to know just what an “Admiral Grigorovich class frigate” is vs any other frigate?
Admiral Makarov - try Wikipedia
Re Russian doctors… One of my postdocs twenty+ years ago was a Russian emigre who had been a Chief Doctor of the Supreme Soviet. Or some such… A lovely guy, but not really that smart and he did misdiagnose cases that were not that complex.
So if the best then were that far below our standard, they would be worse now in the Putin era.
woosh
I’m sure they have a role.
Others are focussed on tanks whiile my impression is that artillery is currently more important in the specific situation in Ukraine.
Their highest priority for armour at the moment seem to be for long range artillery (using NATO ammunition).
My mental picture is that tanks are used to shoot at each other and at other targets within about 5km WHILE MOVING in a “mobile war”. Self Propelled artillery is portable to “shoot and scoot” but is not intended to fire while moving and supports indirect fire at longer ranges in a “positional war”.
Current battles seem positional?
Ukraine primarily on defensive at present and has been efficiently dealing with Russian tanks by shoulder mounted missiles from close range. Russian mobilization might improve infantry screens keeping these short range weapons further away from tanks but Ukraine primarily looks to deal with that by longer range artillery rather than by tanks.
Future offensive might benefit more from tanks. But still also has priority for long range artillery and air power to pound enemy lines first?
The problem the Russians had was rushed planning. I believe Putin wanted something for May 9 and figured it would all be cleaned up if he started at the end of Feb so he pressured his generals to go against their advice. They, I’m sure, knew that the heavy machinery will have problems on the fields from the mud and spring thaw.
So, the problem with that is that they ended up having to stay on roads making it difficult to use combined arms tactics - easily ambushed.
Combined arms tactics, whether in the offence or defence, is the key for every operation; the russians did not do that well at all. And even now that they at some level recognize the need to coordinate arms are having problems implementing it - it takes lots of practice to get it right
For quite new frigates (ordered 10 years ago), from photos the Admiral Grigorovich class looks to have been fitted with old tech mechanically scanned radars, rather than the phased-array types fitted on modern western frigates.
That is a step backwards from the preceding class of Russian frigates too. I wonder if it was easier to get a missile through the ship’s defences due to what is presumably a less efficient air-search radar, despite being one of the newest ships in the Russian fleet.
If true, the successful strike on a 7 year old frigate Admiral Makarov is an other disaster for Russian military “prestige” .
Of course there is conjecture as to what allowed such a “well protected” ship like Moskva to be taken out. Maybe a number of sacrificial drones or even one drone dropping chaff is all thats needed to overload and confuse command and control and allow a much more potent missile to get in under their guard. This was alluded to in the case of Moskva . Or is it just poor sensor performance and inferior algorithms used in something as basic as threat detection in clutter ?
If so, the Russians will want to send their other frigates back to sevastopol lest they suffer a similar fate.
I’m picturing one of those suicide drones flying through the bridge like in star wars
Russia had multiple large scale mobilizations along the Ukrainian border since March 2021.
This was not a problem with rushed planning, this I feel, is a deep rooted, systemic problem.
Should we have a minute silence to remember all the dead russian stuff?
No fark 'em, it would take a month to remember everything on that list.
Is it just me or does Oleksandrivka seem to change hands regularly in this war? I wonder what is actually left of the town.