If they’ve been targeting cities with western air defence, it’s unlikely to have an impact on the mobile frontline air defences. Those systems are predominantly soviet era gear or Gepard / Avenger.
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Hang on.
So the Russians are targeting cities with their best and most expensive rockets and drones. Presumably this is cause they have big civilian targets, and it’s part of their terror campaign.
But those cities are also protected by the best air defence systems. So the impact is minimal.
They do this rather than attacking military assets, even tho those assets have inferior air defence systems. Is this because they’re harder to hit?
(Russians sound like a bunch of horrible people, tbh)
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Request for Aussie assistance from Reznikov
https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1662944820132708353?s=20
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But the pictures of destruction of civilian infrastructure and stories on Ukrinform and other European media show to the contrary.
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Yes. Russia, has been targeting civilian assets and population centres over the past 9 months instead of military targets.
Why? Probably because their reconnaissance and target identification function is pathetic, so they pull up soviet era maps and hit the infrastructure that they can locate. Call it a strategy of fear or a strategy of not having other options.
Note that there’s a good chance that some of the Ukrainian weapons warehouses have been hit. Ukraine is very good at keeping things quiet, but the fact that almost zero evidence of these strikes has surfaced in the age of consumer accessible spy satellites tells us it’s not happening often.
Now it looks like Russia wants the ego boost of taking out a Patriot battery. They are throwing the dregs of their missile stockpiles at the most heavily defended cities. Even if there are military assets there, there’s also military assets in less well defended areas.
But when your enemy is making a mistake, let them.
Edit - there have been some strikes recently that did serious damage. Not everything is going towards Kyiv.
“Jokes aside, Russians has recently significantly improved the effectiveness of their missile attacks.
They have dealt a number of painful strikes that has affected Ukraine’s war effort, but the fight goes on.”
https://twitter.com/iaponomarenko/status/1663088158882385920?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
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After a huge bombardment overnight, massive cruise missile attacks continue in daytime Kyiv right now. This is reportedly unusual with strikes normally ending during the night.
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Agree that article read as propaganda, hence the obvious bias.
Ego boost or not, I kinda see the point in targeting the Patriot, and other ‘best’ weapons such as HIMARS. Need to find their weaknesses for future battles / wars. Looks like HIMARS will be a popular weapon globally so if something can be sold as anti-HIMARS there will be a market!
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There are media reports of a Russian hit on a military target in the western region of Khmelnyyski (wherever that is) , sourced from the Telegram account of the regional governor.
They refer to fires being contained in storages of fuel, lubricants and ammunition.
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That is very clear and direct, complete with a video.
tl;dr they need Australian Abrams tanks and Hawkei IFVs - NOW.
This not a private reminder to the Australian Government but a direct public appeal to the Australian people to put pressure on the Australian Government - NOW.
Mike Ryan’s tweets are promoting the campaign.
Let’s join in.
-
Establish a campaign organization, something like “Australians Stand With Ukraine”.
-
Explicit demands and success criteria - “Free the tanks, free the Hawkei”. Move on to achieve more when that has been won.
-
Domain name for an internet presence including standard campaign web site plus:
- Email lists
- Blogs
- Jitsi.org internet voice and video conferences for meetings
- discourse.org forum groups and threads
- “social media” - facebook, twitter etc using them from own internet presence without getting sucked into being part of their internet business.
- best to start from a simple github.org organization account than can be basis for organizing github repos for everything else, including drafting and decision making - eg just use Github “issues” for email exchanges about getting organized (which avoids participants needing to provide each other with email addresses)
Full disclosure - am also thinking of umbrella for “Drone Force Project” repo.
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Today’s Katz:
Would-Be Active Military Roster | Demographics Putin Refrains From Sending to Fight (English SUB)
Today, we’ll discuss the two castes of people the Russian government refuses to utilize in its war effort no matter what. And that provides a vivid illustration of the regime’s priorities.
The two categories the regime has to avoid using are:
- “Law Enforcement” - they rely on large numbers of “siloviki” under arms to defend their rule
- Conscripts - Afghanistan undid Brezhnev regime despite far fewer casualties they. They are afraid popular opposition to conscription for the war will overwhelm them.
Both would be natural sources to provide trained and disciplined people for the war if the regime was not in such a perilous situation.
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Especially when the conclusion the states that ‘it hasn’t been launched despite favourable weather conditions’
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It is more than a month since this post from @Koala and my post immediately following it.
I just got two SMS text messages from Taojas today of links he thinks might be interesting.
One of them is interesting to me:
But I’m not willing to act as a relay for posts to this forum, except for the minimum necessary to repeat once again that I am only willing to pass on contact details if Taojas wants to pass his contact details to somebody who could chat to him by phone or SMS txt and DM @Koala or whoever else handles such problems to sort out his login.
My guess is that there is some simple problem that could be sorted out on the phone (eg confusion re spam folders, precise spelling of account names etc etc).
I have neither the time nor temperment for sorting out such problems.
I am sending link to this post to Taojas phone.
If anybody responds to this with a DM to me asking me to ask Taojas if he wants to exchange contact details with them I will do so, or likewise relay such a request from Taojas.
Otherwise I do not intend to respond to anything further about Taojas.
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From above link I also enjoyed watching this 18’ video on the R18 octocopter drone, which is also shown in photos of the new drone strike companies with Peugot 4 door pickups.
Very pleasant presenter with exactly the right attitude on continuous development at speed of relevance to stay ahead of counter measures. EW counter measures a major problem. Also at 6’03" good focus “Our task is to minimize the risk to personnel and cause as much damage [to Russian troops] as possible.”
Designed for survivability - can survive with 2 of 8 rotors and 1 of 2 batteries gone.
At 16’ 52" seemed to be indicating two independent control boards as well, but I think more likely referred to two drones deployed for each mission in case one not working.
Mentions that the R18 are noisy (like a tractor) and not used for reconnaissance but only used at night for strikes (and cargo deliveries - eg munitions and medical supplies to an isolated unit). Crew of 3 - pilot, navigator and sapper.
Tweets and article also has detailed tables of relatively costs and benefits parameters for different targets and links to more details in Forbes Ukraine, translated here:
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Reports that Russia successfully struck the home base of the SU-24 fleet and damaged 5 aircraft. Few things to note… this is the home base of the aircraft that launch Stormshadow but it is realistic that those aircraft operate from elsewhere. The base has large numbers of hardened aircraft shelters, so unlikely to damage 5 sheltered aircraft. Most likely a handful of retired airframes were hit parked outside.
Watch this space I guess, there will be satellite images in the coming days.
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Denmark has increased defence support to Ukraine to 3B euros.
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All clear from the daytime strike, with 11 of 11 cruise missiles shot down.
Wreckage of a missile fell into heavy traffic, which gave this insane video.
https://twitter.com/goncharenkoua/status/1663146740600512514?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
MANPAD crews doing some of the work, scattered around the approaches to thin out the swarm before the expensive air defences need to take over.
https://twitter.com/irisellen0355/status/1663155079615066115?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
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bump
L8R gone
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Summary from Noel and rolled up thread
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1662928443305086976?s=20
https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1662962260711555074?s=20
summary from Perpetua on UA shaping attacks
https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1662884716788301833?s=20