This is a very interesting thread about cost/benefit/impact analysis of the weapon systems used currently.
As well as the global strategic view of these technologies.
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1662945939424681986?s=20
Bump
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Official: 100 soldiers killed in strike on temporary Russian base near Mariupol.
About 100 Russian soldiers were killed, and over 400 were injured in a strike on a former healthcare facility near Mariupol, exiled Advisor to the city mayor Petro Andriushchenko said on May 29
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https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1663221985705443331?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
Oryx has identified over 2000 Russian tank losses
Real numbers will be far higher when undocumented destructions and maintenance attrition are added to the total.
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UN KFOR peacekeepers were attacked overnight by Serbian militants, injuring 40+ soldiers, 3 of them seriously. There’s some pretty ugly footage of you go hunting.
That area is sliding into violence, with Serbian President Vucic making some very concerning moves. I don’t know enough about the lead up to this, but it feels calculated to create a problem for NATO to solve. Has a very strong grey zone warfare vibe, fitting Russia’s style perfectly. As with an anything in this region, I expect it to be complicated and a blend of triggers.
KFOR vehicles were spray painted with Z markings, which gives an indication of where the headspace of the Serbian militants is at.
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Biden - “ATACMS are still in play”
https://twitter.com/sarahashtonlv/status/1663293223572508673?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
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All hail St TOW
https://twitter.com/bloem_jesse/status/1663288543181930498?s=20
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Christians against Muslims. Ethnic Albanian Mayor elected in a Serb majority area of Kosovo after a Serb boycott of the elections.
IIRC Serbia had called for UN intervention.
The international status of Kosovo is still not settled, along with the borders of a Serbian designated autonomous region of Serbia.
The Serbian Government has also been facing protests over the mass shootings. The President has resigned.
ADD
Reportedly Djokovic bought in after his first round win at Roland Garros. While calling for an end to the violence, he wrote that Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.
(Australia had given some Kosovar Muslims temporary refuge at the height of the war)
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That’s big news. If that comes about because the UK had the balls to get storm shadow happening then that’s another big tick to the UK’s outsized hand that they’ve played.
ATACMS will be of much greater benefit to UA since they don’t need a fighter jet launch.
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These latest rounds of drone and missile attacks by RU smack a little of a desperate attempt to unsettle UA and distract or disrupt their counteroffensive plans. To me, this shows that the RUAF are growing ever more nervous, and make no mistake they are desperate.
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I don’t understand the 2 videos.
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Jesse Bloom video shows a missile flying horizontally above the tank with explosion at the tank but trajectory never becomes non-horizontal so I don’t understand how it is a top down attack on the tank and where the actual explosion came from?
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Says it is a javelin, comment below says it is a TOW. I assume TOW is bigger explosion than a javelin and arrives top down?
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I also assume TOW now means Tube-launched Optically tracked Wireless, not Wired? Or are older versions supplied to Ukraine still wired?
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Tendar tweet immediately above Jessse Bloom tweet seems to imply Javelin arriving at an angle downwards detonated an internal projectile exploding from the tank in a direction opposite to the arrival of the missile but not in the same line as the missile, with visual impression that it might have been a projectile hitting the tank? How would that occur?
On another topic, video of R18 drone I posted above mentions launch mission crew of 3 including a sapper as well as pilot and navigator.
I assume the sapper is the “combat engineer” specializing in technical assembly, selection and loading of payload, testing, and calibration of the drone and ground data link before launch and after recovery while the “navigator” is focused on location of the drone in relation to the ground data link and the target during the flight and “pilot” is in command of the sortie during the flight.
But it seems an excessive crew size, especially since presenter in the video does have a focus on minimizing risk to personnel.
Video mentions that unlike Kamikaze drones which don’t have IMUs and autopilot, the R18 is very stable so does not require 30 hours of flight simulator training in actual aircraft control.
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To minimize risk to personnel I would be aiming to combine the pilot and navigator roles and put them at a remote location away from both the launch site and ground data link. Both for ISTAR drones that are able to stand off from the targets they are observing and especially for a strike drone like R18 that is noisy and may be making repeated close strikes subject to enemy fire both at the drone and its launch location/ground data link. Any thoughts on obstacles to that which explain them not doing it already?
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Is the necessity for a sapper at the launch and/or recovery just due to immaturity of the technology compared with fully automated javelin, TOW etc?
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Would the non-avionics aspects of the drone still require a sapper if the avionics board was as fully modern as possible - Jetson Orin doing extensive tests and calibration of everything connected to it? Just simple field replacement of the drone diagnosed as faulty by the spare drone accompanying the launch. Field replacement of LRUs by less skilled personnel than a sapper back at the base with actual repairs shipped elsewhere?
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Does the loading of relatively cheap grenades, and other payloads that have risk of exploding locally inherently require “sapper” skills or ought to be just part of the training of a launcher in the same sort of TTPs as a grenadier?
Tow and many other top down attack missiles don’t strike nose first into the target. They fly over the top and then fire a projectile at 90 degrees to the flight path.
Edit - from memory Javelin can do a direct attack nose first into the side, or bounce up and dive down to do a nose attack into the top.
Disadvantage of TOW is they are relatively slow and require guidance from the launch platform through to detonation. That exposes the Bradley or infantry to return fire for 10-15 seconds. Javelin is a fire and forget weapon. There may be a newer generation TOW that is self guided, but I don’t know if it’s compatible with the desert storm variant Bradley that Ukraine has.
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Wow! That certainly answers my question.
That seems more like a low flying UAV delivering a strike. Presumably travels at ballistic speeds from a ballistic launch so minimal flight control that enables reaching the target could not be cost effectively enhanced with enough propulsion for return of the carrier.
I assume the projectile launched at 90 degrees is basically just “dropped”, without separate propulsion and guidance ie it is a gravity bomb that merely has to be “released” from the carrier at the right moment, like smaller grenades dropped from strike drones.
Or is it really “fired” with some propulsion?