The War in the Ukraine

T

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
The Bakhmut retreat from the Ukrainian POV. Large vehicles like a tank was seen abandoned as they got stuck in the mud.


Wagner troops inside Bakhmut with a journalist.


A deep strike at Avdiivka. 20 Ukrainian personnel and 3 vehicles were destroyed in the attack.


Big explosion at Avdiivka. This could be an ammo depot that was hit.

 
T

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Overbom said:
Sounds like copium. Number 1 strategic purpose in strategic bombings is to exhaust the opponent's potential.

That 1 year after the war there are still electricity plants standing says it all in my opinion. Civilian infrastructure needs a lot of time to build up so why not take it out?

The only answer is probably that Russia's cruise missiles stocks are too low. As a counter example see how the US waged its war against Iraq and what kind of targets it destroyed from the first month of their offensive
Click to expand...

Power plants are not the only thing they were hitting. Operational headquarters, troop barracks, factories that build shells and ammo like the Soviet era ones making 152mm, repair shops that repair damaged tanks and vehicles, ammo depot, fuel depot. If you hit a hanger you can take out the vehicles underneath and most importantly the trained technicians. These other stuff are all low hanging fruit.

The infrastructure itself is tough to destroy thanks to the Soviet era redundancies. The Cold War guys build them well to a tactical nuclear war specifications. But once destroyed or damaged they are also irreplaceable as no one builds them anymore.
 
T

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Aegis21 said:
That’s a hell of an expensive way to do SEAD. I don’t think they’re using million+ $ cruise missiles to just get the Ukrainians to use up their interceptor stocks. Anyway, they will just be equipped with new western designs like Patriot as they use up their old Soviet stocks. The only reasonable way this could be done is if the Russian have a large amount of old missiles that will soon be decommissioned.

Both sides have often reported that the Russians are using S-300s in land-attack mode. My guess is that they’re using up old 5V55s by launching them and forcing the Ukrainians to try to shoot them down. The same cost benefit analysis doesn’t apply to these missiles as they’ve long been out of production and will have to be retired anyway.

The last point I want to make is that the campaign against electricity hasn’t worked out very well, much like the attacks against fuel depots earlier into the war. In both cases, when capacity goes down the Ukrainians just shift supplies to the military at the expense of civilians (remember the long gas lines early in the war). That’s why the strikes don’t affect Ukrainian rail logistics that much and in case they have no other choice, they could just fall back on diesel trains. Using their missiles on actual significant targets like the Dnieper bridges probably would’ve been more fruitful (and they had enough to do that).
Click to expand...

There would be wreckage of such S300 missiles in the target areas. What's confirmed only are Kh-22, Kh-101 and Kaliber, which are air and sea fired. Wreckage of S-300 missiles are Ukrainian that missed their targets and fallen to their residential areas. Geran is used to troll air defenses.

A clear drop of Ukrainian GDP by a third confirms there are long standing effects in the bombing along with shortages of ammunition. 30% GDP loss in one year is national existential level and this points to a country that will no longer sustain itself. Tanks are used sparingly and to save on diesel fuel further, you rely on gas powered civilian vehicles to move troops. However these are extremely vulnerable against fragmentation and so that contributes to a surge in human casualties.
 
Phead128

Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
plawolf said:
The Russian attacks against Ukraine infrastructure is only intended to knock out those infrastructure as a secondary objective. The primary objective is to exhaust Ukrainian AD ammo inventory and to expose Ukrainian batteries to do a semblance of SEAD and DEAD. Not sure if Russia has the ISR capabilities to try to back track Ukrainian missile replenishment efforts to try and find their missile stashes for direct attack.

With that primary objective in mind, large, sporadic missile barrages makes far more sense over low intensity continuous attack.

It may not be a co-incidence that this new mass infrastructure attack happened shortly after footage surfaced of new British supplied SAMs being transported in Ukraine.

It may also be part of the Russian build up activities for either the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive to relieve Bukhmut; and/or Russian’s own spring/summer offensive elsewhere so that they could deploy the VKS fixed wing fast jet fleets more freely.
Click to expand...
The latest missile barrage against energy infrastructure featured six (6) Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which is designed to evade anti-air defenses and bypass it altogether. If the primary objective was to draw out Ukrainian anti-air batteries for SEAD/DEAD strategy, it's probably more cost-effective to use $20K Shahed/Geran-2 drones than multi-million dollar cruise and hypersonic missiles?
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 
G

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Phead128 said:
The latest missile barrage against energy infrastructure featured six (6) Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which is designed to evade anti-air defenses and bypass it altogether. If the primary objective was to draw out Ukrainian anti-air batteries for SEAD/DEAD strategy, it's probably more cost-effective to use $20K Shahed/Geran-2 drones than multi-million dollar cruise and hypersonic missiles?
Click to expand...
The Kalibr cruise missile likely costs way less than $1 million each. The Tomahawk costs $2 million and that is with US salaries and a much lower production rate. The US buys like a couple hundred Tomahawks a year at best. The Russians launch more Kalibr than that in a single quarter. Production costs scale down with production. The turbine engine, probably the most expensive component, is also common to all their subsonic cruise missiles, so the Kh-101 and Kh-59 will also use it. For all we know the Kalibr could cost a fifth of the price of a Tomahawk.

The hypersonic missiles like the Kinzhal should be way more expensive though. Solid rockets of that level of complexity are typically more expensive. I assume they used the Kinzhal on a critical target like an enemy command post or bunker, or a large ammo dump like they did when the war started. It is just a matter if it is economically expedient to use one or not. And I guess it was.
 
Last edited:
C

Chilled_k6

Junior Member
Registered Member
plawolf said:
I’m pretty sure they never integrated HARM onto the Mig29. Instead they rigged up a special tablet computer to allow communication with and launch of the missile using a special pylon.

At 0:58s of this video, you can just make out the top of the tablet at the bottom left of the frame.



In theory, so long as the pylon is compatible with the AMRAAM missile, they should be able to do the same using a software update to the tablet.

The biggest issue will be down to the practicality of how much manual input is required on the tablet, which in turn depends on how advanced the software is.

If the pilot needs to manually key in GPS coordinates on the tablet, that’s obviously a massive PITA, but is at least theoretically possible against a deployed SAM site as they are not going to be going anywhere in the 30-60s the pilot might need to key in the coordinates. But that is not going to work against fast moving air targets.

If the tablet can wirelessly pair with the commercial GPS satnav units also shown in the above video, and can display a moving map of live location of the Mig29 and allow the pilot to using touch input on the map to feed coordinates to the missile, then that might work against a completely unawares opponent by having the pilot guesstimate where the bogey will be, factoring missile flight time (XX seconds), and try to put the missile within seeker range of where the bogey will be in XX seconds. It can increase its odds by volley firing multiple AMRAAMs at different locations to maximise chances of one missile getting within range.

Massively suboptimal, but at least workable in theory. It also does away with mid course updates so the Mig can shoot and scoot immediately. It will have very low KP, but should also minimise the risk to the Mig, so if it lives long enough to keep taking pot shots, eventually it will get lucky.

Obviously they won’t be hunting Flankers like this (well, at least they shouldn’t), but they might catch some Su25s out, especially if the Su25s are making multiple passes against fixed ground targets.
Click to expand...

I think consensus here and elsewhere I've seen is that they added a special pylon like you say.

But I've also seen commentary some time ago of the possibility of the signal mimicking I described. For example, in that video at about 0:32s, when the HARM is fired from the plane, the MiG's HUD (circled in red) lights up. See image. Wouldn't that indicate some sort of integration with the aircraft?

1678429630600.png

I don't know what the numbers and Cyrillic letters mean. I've seen people say the HARM imitates KH-58 signal. Maybe the 27 on there in this screenshot means R-27, that the HARM signal imitates. If you or others on here are familiar with the HUD, the language, etc. this can be debunked or proven.

For the tablet, it may be part of the Ukrainian networked system (Kropiva - also used by Ukrainian artillery, AD etc.), for downloading data from NATO reconnaissance via radio. Seems like the best way for Ukrainians to get the coordinates for the AD emission source. But I don't know if they can really do it mid flight, or if they program the coordinates "Pre-Briefed Mode" on the ground.
 
BoraTas

BoraTas

Captain
Registered Member
tankphobia said:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1631557778987974657

Australia is sending 100 model planes a month at $5000 a pop, 120km endurance with 3-5kg payload. Waiting for IKEA to join in the fray with the flatpacking.
Click to expand...
This is like scammers in Turkey who buy a few thousand USD drones from Alibaba, modify them slightly and sell them to the Turkish military for 100k USD. For some reason, militaries are easy to rip off when it comes to drones.
 
Gloire_bb

Gloire_bb

Captain
Registered Member
Phead128 said:
The latest missile barrage against energy infrastructure featured six (6) Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which is designed to evade anti-air defenses and bypass it altogether. If the primary objective was to draw out Ukrainian anti-air batteries for SEAD/DEAD strategy, it's probably more cost-effective to use $20K Shahed/Geran-2 drones than multi-million dollar cruise and hypersonic missiles?
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Click to expand...
We aren't sure VKS did launch Kinzhals.
There was a long-exposition photo of the launch of precisely 6 Iskander ballistic missiles yesterday.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top