The War in the Ukraine

Arrivals at Ladyzhyn TPP from Vinnytsia region - apparently from Shahed-136, blackouts occurred after the attack. We also have critical infrastructure in Lviv which was also targeted by the missiles according to local authorities.
And the attack on Lviv keeps on going

Railways appear to be the targets that day as well, attacking the AFU's rail logistics system.

Missile arrival videos:




It seems that military targets are also being attacked by Russia, but Ukraine does not disclose, if I remember correctly, there was a comment on Telegram from a Ukrainian soldier complaining about that in yesterday's arrivals, they had no way to prepare because the government did not said that military targets were being victims of massive attacks


Heavy traffic out of Kiev

According to this Ukrainian channel, in the Kirovohrad region, air defense forces are operating, but many complaints that they cannot deal with these attacks.

The attack this time seems bigger, the previous one was reported 40 bombers, split between Tu-95 and Tu-160. But it is also being reported that the VMF launched 10 Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea.



VKS activity in Bakhmut

The Shepetovsky railway junction and the workshop in the Khmelnytsky region were destroyed. These were very important installations for supplying the troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Is anyone keeping a count of Russian cruise missile expenditures? How many have been fired thus far?

Zichan said:

Is anyone keeping a count of Russian cruise missile expenditures? How many have been fired thus far?

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None. and nobody really know their Pre-war inventory either.

Yet i keep hearing a persistent narrative or "Russian running out of cruise missiles" which have zero basis and basically a dare now.

and those companies like Smolensk aircraft plant, Kirov plant, and Avangarde still making missiles nonstop to this day.

Zichan said:

Is anyone keeping a count of Russian cruise missile expenditures? How many have been fired thus far?

Click to expand...

Last count I could find from the start of August, was around 3500 missiles since the start of the war. We are probably sitting beyond 4000 by now.

Reliabilty of the count is a different matter

Stealthflanker said:

Yet i keep hearing a persistent narrative or "Russian running out of cruise missiles" which have zero basis and basically a dare now.

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A lot of assumptions(and wishful thinking) based on that the Russians don't use one of two types of missiles but also use AShM from time to time

Zichan said:

Is anyone keeping a count of Russian cruise missile expenditures? How many have been fired thus far?

Click to expand...

Not enough and more to come.

They make more calibres in a week than they fire in a month.

According to the previous Director General of Roscosmos Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, Russian workers and engineers, working in three shifts, ensure the production of about 50 CR Caliber per day.

How much is actually a state secret. Whoever gives the correct answer will get 20 years.

Click to expand...

Black Shark said:

Not enough and more to come.

They make more calibres in a week than they fire in a month.

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so if this is true then, a month of constant production they can churn out 1500 Cruise missiles. and may need to add tally to Kh-101's and Kh-555 they were also made.

The cost of the missile in rough USD's can be low.. much lower perhaps than Forbes estimates. Kalibr itself is a deriviative from earlier RK-55 Reliyef and 3K-10 Granat, thus the development cost must be lower and entail lower risk as most of guidance, aerodynamics and integration already done in previous two missiles.

As for why now? I actually thought they'd wait a bit for the cold to settle in, but apparently it's already pretty cool out there.

In all seriousness, It finally looks like someone is taking things slighly more seriously. Its like someone went retro 90s and reviewed the democratic bombings of Iraq, Libya, Serbia as the examples of how to bring a country to "heel", as Times magazine once so eloquently put.

Turning on the news this morning to get myself updated on where the propaganda is currently focused, and damn they are in full throttle maximum overdrive trying to explain how Russia is targeting civilian gatherings, apartment buildings, schools and hospitals, and "civilian infrastructure" (whatever thats supposed to mean), with these cruise missile attacks.

On top of that, all weekend they been selling suicide bombings of civilian structures as official military strikes worthy of applause. A curious curious shift in propaganda for nations that were so heavily invested in the war on terror

Seriously I could conjure up a more convincing narrative than these kids

Then I watched loads of amateur footage and everything checks out just as i suspected. A whole crap load of power plants, electrical substations, fuel storage, warehouses with lots of secondary explosions, industrial facilities, and command facilities got smashed over the long weekend.

It's about time ffs

Xi Yazhou's weekly show, this time talking about kamikazi-UAV/pseudo cruise missile in the context of the recent Russian airstrikes.

He first pointed out that Shahed-136/Geran-2, on account of its small warhead, moderate range and cheap price intended to be used in mass should conceptually thought of as fancy MLRS rounds instead of low grade cruise missile. The reason for the cheapness is partly to do with size and partly because you're using an engine that's only a small step above an RC plane, guidance package that's about as complex as a smart phone's gyroscope and GPS. This results in a weapon that's easy to intercept for air defense but due to their numbers when used in large enough number they can penetrate any air defense.

The downside is the warhead. With only a 50kg warhead it won't be effective against a lot of targets you may want to hit. If you try to scale it up to a 450kg warhead you necessarily need to give it a much more military like and expensive engine, this drives up the cost enough that you have to worry about getting shot down by air defense so it then also need fancy guidance and in the end you'll just end up with a Tomahawk or Kalibr.

One suggestion out of this dilemma he suggests is for Russia to go down the same path as PLA's J-6 UAV. J-6 UAV can pack 2 tons of explosive all together, is much faster than Shahed-136 and is actually not that much more expensive given the air frame is sunk cost and you just need to pay for the conversion kit.

Instead of Mig-19 though he suggest Russia's stockpile of Mig-23 could be used for this. If they can get help from certain companies already experienced in this work such converted drone missiles could be available in a number of month. Their main disadvantage - that of hogging runway time would not be a large drawback in this war given plentiful military airfields in western Russia and the fact that VKS isn't making that many sorties a day.