Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
ISR is clearly one of the system lacking... situation awareness for a good part of the defence line in Ukraine is relying on some foot soldiers with a radio in a hole at the front calling reinforcement. It's not pretty at all.
Like I said lack of proper commander panoramic thermal sight. If you are in a tank buttoned up you can't see much of anything.

And the lack of satellite assets means ISR from satellites, when it is available, won't be as up to date as what the US is providing to Ukraine.
The main difference here is the waste amount of "commercial" Western optical reconnaissance satellites. Russia has nothing like that. Thankfully for the Russians, the optical satellites are pretty much useless when there is heavy cloud cover and everything is covered with snow in winter. I have been looking at satellite pictures of Russia and Ukraine since late November. You can hardly spot anything. It is either covered in a blanket of white snow, which covers everything and creates massive glare, or there is heavy cloud cover which makes optical observation pointless.

There are also radar satellites, even commercial ones, these should also work with cloud cover. But the information you can get is a lot more limited. You can basically identify thermal sources or large objects.

Another weapon system for Ukraine would be one that got rid of small UAV. Some kind of mini c-ram/laser with optical/IR search system against the background. Would have been one of the nicest thing to field but without the knowleges that evolved during the conflict, it would have been quite hard to design it.
The Russians do have combat lasers. Just not portable or cheap enough yet. I think the most success will be electronic warfare to counter drones and there are several such systems already in use.
 

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Like I said lack of proper commander panoramic thermal sight. If you are in a tank buttoned up you can't see much of anything.

And the lack of satellite assets means ISR from satellites, when it is available, won't be as up to date as what the US is providing to Ukraine.
The main difference here is the waste amount of "commercial" Western optical reconnaissance satellites. Russia has nothing like that. Thankfully for the Russians, the optical satellites are pretty much useless when there is heavy cloud cover and everything is covered with snow in winter. I have been looking at satellite pictures of Russia and Ukraine since late November. You can hardly spot anything. It is either covered in a blanket of white snow, which covers everything and creates massive glare, or there is heavy cloud cover which makes optical observation pointless.
A fleet of Joint STARSki and/or SAR-equipped UAV and more AWACs would be immensely helpful.
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
They have the A-50U and the Tu-214R. But aircraft like the Su-34MR variant or A-100 still aren't in service.
They clearly could use better high altitude recon drones I guess.
 

pmc

Major
Registered Member
Shoigu made a statement that current AWACS need improvement and they mentioning need of quantity and quality. if it is not scanning sufficient area that you need both quantity and quality. I dont think when they designed A-50U they had these many drones in mind. its cheap upgrade not comprehensive. only last year model have some improvement.

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Sergei Shoigu announced the need to modernize A-50 AWACS aircraft. This model has proven itself well in the Northern Military District. However, the number of threats and challenges that Russia faces requires not only a qualitative increase in this area, but also a quantitative one. How exactly could the domestic military-industrial complex solve this problem?

“In principle, such problems are partially solved by the development of the Taganrog Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex named after Georgy Beriev A-100. Nevertheless, modernization projects of this kind will bear fruit only in 3-4 years, and it is important for us to get the result now,” the expert believes.


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According to instructor pilot, Air Force Major Andrei Krasnoperov, the modernized A-50U aircraft will allow Russia to more successfully control the situation from the air and track enemy flights at a qualitatively different level. “Externally there are practically no differences from previous models. The main changes affected the technical stuffing: the range of action was increased, and the guidance equipment was improved. We also tried to ensure that the car could rise to great heights,” the interlocutor added.
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Like I said there is the A-100 Premier program. But the development for that isn't finished yet.
A lot of people also seem to persistently undercount the amount of A-50U that have been upgraded.
They have delivered at least eight upgraded A-50U aircraft and they seem to upgrade like one or two aircraft a year.

The radar in the A-50U is pretty much obsolete at this point. But it isn't like the US E-3 AWACS aircraft are much better.
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Russian IFF isn't 100% reliable. And they had trouble with chain of command and combat sight picture. For example the Army air defenses operated in separate chain of command to the Air Force air defense network. You can tell this by the Russians sometimes having roughly similar systems in terms of capability. For example the Buk-M3 and the S-350. One is for the Army and the other for the Air Force. One is meant to be mobile, and the other is meant to protect fixed locations. They were supposed to put all the air defenses into an unified command but I am sure they still have issues.
 
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pmc

Major
Registered Member
It look like friendly fire incidents have gone up with the introduction of semi autonomous s-350 system...
s-350 is not in field so no reason in this area if this info is correct. S-350 high g missiles are almost inside the city.
 
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