THAT is how you destroy an armored column. You blow up the vehicles at the head and tail of the column then destroy it in detail.
US to ask someone else to send Ukraine diesel more like it. Good thing Europe nuked its own diesel supply by throttling deliveries of diesel from Russia then.
No way. Even if it could the gas would be so expensive it would render European manufacturing non-competitive. It is possible to replace Russian gas with US, Qatari, and other LNG and piped gas sources in the long term. But we are talking like a decade here.Does the USA have that gas supply or the ability to deliver the amount to the EU to completely replace Russia
If Russia shut down its gas supply the Europeans would need to shut down their industry to keep power usage low.
The US government was dumb enough to believe they did not need Russian oil supplies. But the thing is a lot of the refineries in the Gulf coast were designed to process heavy Venezuelan oil. When the US sanctioned Venezuela they had to replace that oil with Russian oil. And fracked oil is not a replacement since it has less dense hydrocarbons in it not suitable for diesel. The logical replacement is to make a pipeline from Canada to send heavy tar sands oil to those Gulf coast refineries. Currently it is being sent by rail but transport capacity is maxed out. Iran is necessary to cover some of the supply and to replace Russian oil sales to Europe. But even Iran can't do this all by themselves. They will need the Saudis and their allies to release their oil reserves.and also to note is why in earth did he go to Iran and Venezuela to beg for help
There was already a critical fuel situation with a lot of production capacity struggling to ramp up after COVID-19 lockdowns were eased and global oil consumption was ramping up. They can't ban Russian oil from the global market on top of that. Everything will break.
You will see massive diesel oil shortages in Europe and likely some in the US as well.
He seized the assets of not just the Russian government but also Russian billionaires abroad. They are arresting the mansions of Russian billionaires in Europe for example. Do you have any clue of how many houses Middle Eastern oil sheiks have in Europe? They also have huge sovereign wealth funds invested in Western countries. If all of those can be taken from them just like that because they get into a war the West does not like, and Saudi Arabia IS in a war in Yemen right now, do you think they would just keep compliant and pliable?and also why did he call Multiple middle eastern nations for help only to get rebuffed by all of them.
They did covert supplies to Chechnya as well. They sent foreign insurgents and weapons via Turkey overland from Georgia into Chechnya. The Russians tracked the helicopters all the way to NATO bases in Turkey back then. If he thinks he can do the same here I think he will find out the Russians might not just stay back and not hit those bases this time.Two weeks ago, 4 star retired general Keane suggested that the US should seriously consider covert strikes on Russian convoys and covert aerial supply missions to Ukraine. In his words, the US has extensive capability in that domain, but details are classified
The Su-34 has basically built-in targeting equipment in it. It might not be that good but it is there.If the Russians had all its Su30 and Su34 integrated with targeting pod and 250kg class PGMs (laser or Glonass/INS) with gliders (extended range) or not. They would have been able to save A LOT of their much more expensive cruise missile and tactical ballistic missiles.
Even the Ukrainian forces around Donbass are basically close to built up areas not that far from civilians. To do that the Russians would have to stop minimizing civilian casualties.Why haven't see seen Tu-22M, or even the Tu-95 apart from once at the start of the war? I don't mean using standoff munitions, I mean the old fashioned dumb gravity bombs onto enemy targets.
They might do it. They also have reserves available they have not bothered to call back into service yet.Moscow will have to decide in the next month or so whether to release the expiring cadre of conscripts, even as they induct new ones.
This war of attrition favors the Russians. Ukraine is basically a giant meat grinder right now.So far as I can see, the basic choice that confronts Moscow is this: escalation and a general mobilisation and war economy in order to achieve a more comprehensive victory over a long, grinding war of attrition
Since the Ukrainians refused to compromise I doubt it will be just that. Would the Russians just go out from Kherson knowing the local people would suffer reprisals from the Ukrainian government because their local government surrendered to the Russians? They would be fools to leave the places they took over.or rather backing down to accept a more limited and partial settlement (e.g. control of Donbas + land bridge to Crimea).
A lot of people expected Putin to impose martial law on day 1. But he did not. I think he could do it but even in case of limited conflict with NATO it wouldn't be necessary.Given the apparent commitment of Putin and his circle to the current enterprise, the decisive factor is likely to be Moscow's perceptions of its level of domestic support and the material feasibility of a large-scale mobilisation. Would the Russian people accept such a mobilisation, or would it rather doom the present regime? Might Putin even perceive a greater political danger in backing down than in escalating?
I doubt it. They pulled a designer of the Yak-130 to work as chief designer on Orion. That is how they got it to work so quickly after floundering for years with drones.I'm just gonna provide you a source, take this with some scepticism
The Russians also have Izdeliye 30 engine program. Last I heard they had problems manufacturing it reliably. Still flying in prototype stage.But we know China is far ahead because Russia has no active program for a F135-class (180-190 kN) engine. Their last attempt fell flat thanks to post-USSR budget cuts and they repurposed the technology from that program into AL-31 variants. Whereas for China, the WS-15 is already in flight testing (if the recent rumours are true) and will likely be operational around 2024-25.
If you can skip the research phase and have a copy you can clone it simplifies things a lot.You think that China (or US, Japan, any technologically advanced country) can’t make an equivalent to S400 or S500 if they really wanted? They don’t do it because it doesn’t fit their doctrine.
The USSR's army was mostly defensive in nature. They did not have huge expeditionary air forces in their force structure. Most of their aircraft were plugged into their air defense network and were basically appendages of it. Modern Russian aircraft are not as dependent on the availability of ground radars. But this is a legacy thing to consider when you look at their air force. SAMs are much cheaper than aircraft as well. Against the larger industrial economy of the combined West that is the way they found to keep costs down.USSR did not expect to have air superiority against NATO which is why they invested so heavily into SAMS.
China's forces will need to be more expeditionary in the long term yes. They will need to deploy into the Southeast Pacific or Persian Gulf region or both. Only way to secure supplies in case of conflict. This is why Russian energy supplies to China are critical for global security.China is also moving away from the land based ADS because the future conflicts China envisions will be away from the mainland. A bunch of S300/HQ-9 or S400, even proverbial S500 stuck in Fujian would be less useful than a flying J20/J35
Global Britain does it again. Major fail. I don't know what they think can do in the XXIst century pretending they are still a colonial power.Well done India...
They are not second line troops. They are VDV paratroopers. You wouldn't send paratroopers to assault a huge city like that.I wonder if maybe the Ukrainian sense that the forces surrounding Kyiv are just second line troops meant to pin them in the city so Ukr forces are emboldened to conduct limited counter attack?
I would not trust those numbers too much. This happens with every conflict. Aircraft are misidentified, or identified as destroyed when they weren't, crap like that.Here's the part where it shot down a drone:
When Russian MOD say they shoot down like 16 drones a day I'm guessing it's mostly like this and not 16 TB-2 a day.