The War in the Ukraine

Temstar said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1580552742245847041

Well there you go, MiG-29 confirmed to have been downed by debris from Shahed-136. First confirm aerial kill by autonomous thinking machines.

Consider the problems of trying to engage Shahed-136 with a jet fighter:

• it's has a small RCS as it's mostly made out of fiberglass, it also flies so slow compared to normal aircraft that radar might filter it out as noise
• it presents a very small heat signature with its moped engine
• it's a small target, not easy to spot by mark 1 eyeballs
• it flies very slowly, hard for a jet to get a good shooting angle on it due to approach speed unlike Spitfire vs V1
• it flies very low to the ground, making engagement risky

Weather it's BVRAAM or SRAAM or gun, none of them seem like a good safe option to engage those drones with.

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This is possibly the most bizarre accident to have happen during the course of the war.
Like what are the chances of a debris of possibly less than 2 metres drone size to be able to downed a literal fighter jet

memfisa said:

I said before command detonated (maybe with a radar signal) fragmentation rounds from medium caliber guns like that Russian 57mm one in the Kugarnets family or whatever it's called would be pretty good against these things in large numbers. Such a shell should be fairly cheap and simple enough to be cost effective

I think that gun is meant to shred lighter armor and fortifications but this should be a pretty feasible use for it as well

Also, doesn't Bofors already have something kind of like this with the 3p ammo for the 57mm naval gun? It's programmable ammo and not command detonated but similar idea

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AA guns would only work as a point defence. It would also be suceptible to saturation attacks. But what you're describing is basically C-RAM.

Minm said:

How much are they actually charging? The only estimated cost I've seen is $20,000 so even if they're charging five times more than that, a thousand drones would only cost a hundred million dollars. How many Su35 can they get for that?

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Su-35 is something like 80-90 million each, so a thousand drones at five times the quoted $20,000 each would equal to one Su-35 plus change.

I heard a second hand MiG-29 is 8 million, so losing an aircraft while engaging a $20,000-$100,000 UAV is very painful financially. Russian MOD has said the downed planes (by which I'm guessing any aircraft that got baited into drone hunting and was then shot down with R-37M plus this incident) have already more than paid for the cost of the first batch of Shahed-136.

One could argue while that's true from a bookkeeping point of view it's not really relevant to AFU since they're getting MiG-29 for free from Eastern Europe countries, I think that's the whole point of baiting with Shahed-136. When AFU is ready to fire NASAMS do you think they will go easy on the ammo when they're getting it for free?

Failed AFU offensive in the Andriivka sector
After regrouping and aligning the front line on the Mykolaiv-Krivyy Rih direction, Russian Armed Forces took up defenses south of Davydiv Brid. A new entrenchment was established in the vicinity of the village of Sadok.

On October 9, the positions of the 38th Independent Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade were attacked by the Ukrainian Armed Forces' armored vehicles.

Thanks to the competent actions of the Russian motorized riflemen, they managed to ambush and destroy three tanks, five BMPs and an enemy observation post.

The footage captures the defeat and destruction of a YPR-765, BMP-1 and T-72M1. Soldiers from the Russian Far East cleverly used the peculiarities of the terrain, ambushed the enemy in the forest belt and destroyed the enemy vehicles with RPGs and anti-tank missiles.

Drones also played a major role in repelling the attack, as they had earlier detected the advance of the AFU units and corrected their fire from the air. The enemy offensive ended in failure.

Surely the Pentagon will pick up the tab here, that's pocket money to them. One wonders why bring this story up now given the letter was sent a month ago, it's not like Musk's image in the eyes of Kiev supporters can get much worse given his recent comments.

Summary of the main events of October 13:


ZSU seems pretty efficient in SEAD.

The AFU claims to have photos and videos of the 4 Ka-52s shot down, let's wait.

At Ternopil, AFU air defense systems were active in the morning at local time, reported that 6 missiles hit Ternopil

Confirmed russian missile arrivals in Lvov in the morning local time


Kalibr flying over Odessa in the morning local time



Apparently a map showing the intervention sites on the 13th morning of the 13th local time



AWACS active in Crimea in the afternoon local time

I'm posting this tweet because of Shahed's price claim claiming to be only $25,000.

Iranian drones Shahed-131 use American components for $50 from eBay​

Still on Shared, probably one of the reasons it's so cheap

The situation in Bakhmut

Small thread of the situation in Bakhmut

It looks like SOF from AFU, in the picture I saw two people apparently in uniform walking away from the vehicle

Pequenas perdas da AFU em Kherson

Probably the reason we are seeing a lot of AFU fighter jets shot down in recent days, they are using fighter jets to shoot down the Shahed-136s and cruise missiles in the lack of an effective anti-air defense, but they are exposing the fighters to AWACS assets and VKS fighter jets.

More attacks a few hours ago in the Kiev region, Nikolaev and Nikopol

Let's wait and see if there will be another round of attacks on Ukraine as we have seen in recent days.

The reason Starlink is no longer working in Ukraine




Probably irregular airstrips being used by ZSU

Sinnavuuty said:

OFF: There are allegations that a secret mobilization has been announced in Belarus. Subpoenas began to be sent to small areas of Belarus.

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In Belarus, the decision was made to start a secret mobilization, reports a high-ranking source in the Belarusian army. According to information, this will take place under the guise of combat readiness checks and call-ups of reservists.
Source:

I still cannot visualize whether or not Belarus will enter the war by opening a new front in northern Ukraine. We are seeing a lot of military movements, whether from military units from Belarus to Russia and mainly from Russia to Belarus, then there is the supposed joint regional maneuver that both armies are doing, carrying out an integration at the company or battalion level.

We can imagine that if Belarus is going to enter this war it is because Russia has invoked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) asking Belarus to join the war. Russian and Belarusian troops are already gathering on Ukraine's northern border. Whether this is a Russian bluff or genuine preparation to open a new front in the north, the concentration of forces requires Ukraine to move already depleted forces to the northern border. This will weaken Ukraine's ability to delay a Russian offensive in Kherson and Zaporhyzhia.

One of the alleged evidence is that Ukraine is also asking the EU to send troops to protect Ukraine's border with Belarus, certainly Zelensky has received information from these movements and is requesting public help.

Everything is still very strange.

Zelenskyy said that according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia has ordered 2,400 Shahed-136 (also known as Geran-2) drones from Iran. According to other reports, Iran did not transfer drones to Russia, only the technology. Previously, I saw reports that the order was for 1,800 Shahed-136.

Yesterday's news reportedly of a new batch of Shahed delivered to Russia

Nice Thread

So earlier in this thread there was some discussion about Ukraine's surprising network centric warfare ability. On the screenshots of the interior of this Ukrainian Buk, you can see they have added a laptop which displays the wider battlefield airspace through electronic maps and information systems. So this system allows a single radar near Kiev to be integrated into the entire combat system.

The app also can calculate artillery fire, incorporates Sensor Observation Service (SOS) GIS and satellite maps. Apparently it's use is widespread in the Ukrainian military, and they use it for better response times and accuracy of artillery fire, Air defense, engineering units, etc.





The app is called Kropiva.