The War in the Ukraine

Remains of a wheeled deathtrap...uh I mean M113 on the road.


Ukrainian Infantry vehicle taken out. Not sure what the culprit is but I suspect a Forpost drone doing artillery guidance.


Russian troops attacking trenches. Some Ukrainian troops giving up.


Ukrainians creeping along the forest line, got spotted by drone and spammed by artillery.


Drone assisted tank firing at Ukrainian fortifications. This has been a dominant theme lately.

Phead128 said:

I think any leaving any pro-Western regime intact is a failure....what's the point of adding more land or territory to the world's #1 largest country unless it's to serve a grand strategy... it would only delay future conflicts in the future with an re-armed enemy that would even more costly down the line... Might as well use everything in Russia's arsenal to eliminate regime and install a puppet or annex the entire country ...

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They are going to end up with a hostile Eastern Europe and NATO on their borders even if they annex all of Ukraine. There is no world in which Russia comes out of this without NATO on their borders. Their best course of action was to show the world how toothless NATO is by executing a quick and easy regime change in Ukraine, but that’s already failed; best they can do now is to force NATO to the negotiating table by a string of victories that show the Russian bear still has teeth.

Ukrainian S300V1 fired at an Orlan 10.


Entry from @milinfolive

"Rare footage of launches of 9M83 medium-range anti-aircraft missiles from the equally rare Ukrainian S -300V1 air defense system.

Several military air defense systems S-300V1 have been restored and put into service with the Ukrainian Air Force since the end of 2017. In the Russian (and earlier Soviet) army, the S-300V air defense systems perform tasks of covering troops from air and missile attacks on the march, in deployment areas and on the battlefield.

The command of the air forces of Ukraine reported that this launch was carried out on the reconnaissance UAV "Orlan-10". If this is true, then exchanging the 9M83 missile, which is extremely valuable for the enemy, for a cheap reconnaissance drone looks great."

What is an Orlan-10?

Tam said:

Ukrainian S300V1 fired at an Orlan 10.

Entry from @milinfolive

"Rare footage of launches of 9M83 medium-range anti-aircraft missiles from the equally rare Ukrainian S -300V1 air defense system.

Several military air defense systems S-300V1 have been restored and put into service with the Ukrainian Air Force since the end of 2017. In the Russian (and earlier Soviet) army, the S-300V air defense systems perform tasks of covering troops from air and missile attacks on the march, in deployment areas and on the battlefield.

The command of the air forces of Ukraine reported that this launch was carried out on the reconnaissance UAV "Orlan-10". If this is true, then exchanging the 9M83 missile, which is extremely valuable for the enemy, for a cheap reconnaissance drone looks great."

What is an Orlan-10?

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Oy vey such an expensive missile being used to hit something that cost almost a fraction. Then again the Orland could have been used to find a very expensive target so I guess it's a wash but use a stinger or NASAM next time if they are around.

Maikeru said:

This guy gets some stick on the aviation forums on here but I actually found this quite interesting and illuminating:

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Well, when I pointed out here when the conflict started that Russia had over a hundred MiG-31 which could be credibly used as an interceptor, some people dissed it as "only capable of shooting down cruise missiles". So much for that. The MiG-31 can reliably run at high Mach 2 speeds for prolonged periods of time, which is not the case for most other aircraft, and the MiG-31BM has improved radar thanks to better signal processor, plus because they upgraded the avionics computer it can now use a lot more weapon systems including the R-77-1 and R-37M. The R-37M has an active radar seeker which means it can more reliably hit a target at the extreme end of its range than what used to be possible.

In fact the MiG-31BM is fully multirole and can carry anti-radiation, anti-ship, and air-to-surface missiles. The upgrade potential of this aircraft is also not exhausted. If the Russians want to it is certainly possible to upgrade the radar processing avionics even further. It currently uses early 2000s design electronics similar to the ones in the Su-35 based on a MIPS architecture processor. They could upgrade it with the 2010s Elbrus2K architecture processor with DSPs used in the Su-57. It has been documented that the Su-35 derived computer has bottlenecks when processing the gargantuan radar information of the Zaslon-AM radar. The new architecture would also enable much more accurate automatic identification of targets and classification of threats based on their radar signature. There is also the possibility it could use scramjet powered missiles in the future based on propulsion technology derived from the one used in the Zircon. It is known the Russians are developing such missiles for the Su-57.

SolarWarden said:

Oy vey such an expensive missile being used to hit something that cost almost a fraction. Then again the Orland could have been used to find a very expensive target so I guess it's a wash but use a stinger or NASAM next time if they are around.

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It is a waste of interceptor missiles. To use S-300 missiles on an Orlan drone. What happened to Ukraine's Tunguska systems?

Atomicfrog said:

I cannot see them go west of the Dnieper after leaving Kherson. The best they can do is taking all the east while blowing all the bridges... The least they can do is stopping with Luhansk, Donets, Zaporizhia and east part of Kherson, and having a land border that will be an unending mess.

Less than that is failure.

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Yeah, and have Ukraine shell civilian population centres all along that ‘boarder’ forever. It’s just not a viable long term solution, as I’m sure they have learnt since 2014. Even if Russia wants to stop, Ukraine simply won’t allow them any peace and will keep building up the pressure until they have to go in again, all the while NATO pumps in more arms and makes the job 10 times harder than if they just stuck it out and seen it through now.

I think they may use the Dnieper to stabilise the front and establish viable defensive lines in the south to pull the bulk of their forces from there to launch another northern offensive down from Belarus as a phase 3 offensive.

They have learnt from their earlier mistakes and are also using this time to grind down the AFU manpower so the AFU will be less able to launch their own offensives to try to take advantage of the reduced Russian manpower.

SolarWarden said:

Oy vey such an expensive missile being used to hit something that cost almost a fraction. Then again the Orland could have been used to find a very expensive target so I guess it's a wash but use a stinger or NASAM next time if they are around.

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It's a 1200kg missile being used an a 12kg drone powered by a moped engine. It's real cost is probably on the same or lower level than a Geran 2. You can't replace SAMs faster than these drones, not even Stingers (1980 cost, $38k, 2020 cost, $120k) or NASAMs which is at least $500k.

Real life World of Tanks happening with a tank duel between three Russian tanks and two Ukrainian. One Ukrainian tank lost.

Has Russia’s partial mobilisation start to kick in yet? I haven’t seen much recent news about it from the Russian side.

This video is a few weeks old I think, but can this even count as supressive fire?


M113 stuck in the frozen mud

Turns out Germany doesn't have enough Marders in reserve to give to Ukraine, so they'll have to use vehicles from their own active stocks

More MSTA-S spotted in Belarus

Fighting in the Soledar area from the perspective of the Ukranians