The War in the Ukraine

AssassinsMace said:

Interesting they're claiming the Ukrainians shot down most of these suicide drones yet they're saying it was proof Russia was targeting civilians by where they struck... Are these are the same drones that hit Saudi oil refineries that were protected by US Patriot missiles?

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If you have local police shoot their AKs at the drone and the drone then shortly crashes into the transformer station down the road, does that count as a shot down?
I think this is the sort of question that calls for sitting down in a couch with a lit pipe for some serious philosophying.

Meanwhile:

Nikolaev got hit big time overnight.

Today's bombardment has some bigger missiles mixed in:
AFU claims at least one missile shot down and they have a video to prove it:
But also, at least 3 hits by KH-101 recorded in Dnepropetrovsk, possibly more elsewhere.

Temstar said:

I agree with your assessment about Russians and cruise missiles. I think if you asked Shoigu at the start of the year if he's ready for war and got the correct tools for air campaign he would tell you yes and that he's got:

• high end: Iskander, Kinzhal, KH-101 and Kalibr
• low end: Kub, Krasnopol

But as the war went on the following was discovered:

• the really small loitering munition like Kub and its US counterpart switchblade are just too weak and too short ranged to make much of an impact on the battlefield or at strategic level
• the really big and expensive missiles while great are not available in large enough number to hit all the targets you may want to hit, not by a long shot
• Krasnopol lack both range and rely on UAV lasing (another Russian weakness) to fill that gap

So really Russians have discovered there's actually a huge gap in between the low end and high end that are not covered by anything. Hence you see the Russians try to rush things like LMUR, Lancet and that other Item 305 into action to try to fill that role. Shahed-136 just happened to slot into that gap quite well for the Russians. But even so you can see Russians while they are very happy with low cost and thus high volume of Shahed-136 are not quite satisfied with the punch. Hence you see them thinking about buying Iranian ballistic missiles as well as larger kamikaze drones, to fill the upper bound of that missing middle band

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Lancet seems to be about the same size as the Kub and Switchblade. The Kub itself is similar in design with the Shahed-136 that spotting it in the air, it would be easy to confuse it with both the Shahed 131 and Shahed 136.

Kub has a flight duration of 30 minutes and a warhead of 3 kg.
Switchblade 300 has a flight duration of 15 minutes and 10km.
Switchblade 600 has a flight duration of 40 minutes and 40km.
Lancet 1 has a flight duration of 30 minutes with 1kg payload.
Lancet 3 has a flight duration of 40 minutes with 3kg payload.





The original Kubs and Lancets don't offer anything more than the Switchblades, other than they actually work.

But those Lancets that are hitting S300 batteries are something else. There appears to be a new version with at least an hour of flight endurance and a payload of 5kg. I suspect the Kub itself has been technologically superceded by the Lancet, and the Lancet itself has been scaling up, while still preserving the smaller, shorter range variants for more tactical usage. As it appears the same with the Shahed that has now two versions.

Tam said:

Lancet seems to be about the same size as the Kub and Switchblade. The Kub itself is similar in design with the Shahed-136 that spotting it in the air, it would be easy to confuse it with both the Shahed 131 and Shahed 136.

Kub has a flight duration of 30 minutes and a warhead of 3 kg.
Switchblade 300 has a flight duration of 15 minutes and 10km.
Switchblade 600 has a flight duration of 40 minutes and 40km.
Lancet 1 has a flight duration of 30 minutes with 1kg payload.
Lancet 3 has a flight duration of 40 minutes with 3kg payload.


View attachment 99653View attachment 99654


The original Kubs and Lancets don't offer anything more than the Switchblades, other than they actually work.

But those Lancets that are hitting S300 batteries are something else. There appears to be a new version with at least an hour of flight endurance and a payload of 5kg. I suspect the Kub itself has been technologically superceded by the Lancet, and the Lancet itself has been scaling up, while still preserving the smaller, shorter range variants for more tactical usage. As it appears the same with the Shahed that has now two versions.

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Those big Lancet seems to kind of straddle the line between loitering munition and ATGM. They seem to all have HEAT warheads and Russians are using them as super duper long range ATGM to hit single high value targets discovered by recon drones.

Like a HJ-10 but much longer range and slower, or something like that cancelled Netfire missile.

Chilled_k6 said:

Ukrainian armored column in the mud. Looks like autumn mud is in full swing.

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More T-72M's despite the fact that apparently the Ukranian army should be all T-72B3 and T-80U's at this point according to some.

Also love the fact that the smoke grenade launchers are completely blocked by crap.

Seems there was a missile strike on several powerplants again in Kiev, Dnipro and Zhytomir

Temstar said:

I agree with your assessment about Russians and cruise missiles. I think if you asked Shoigu at the start of the year if he's ready for war and got the correct tools for air campaign he would tell you yes and that he's got:

• high end: Iskander, Kinzhal, KH-101 and Kalibr
• low end: Kub, Krasnopol

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high end. P-800 Oniks. intermediate systems will be Kh-35U bal and guided shells of Tornada S.
Oniks day time firing. the other subsonic missiles are most of time night or early morning arrival.

AssassinsMace said:

Interesting they're claiming the Ukrainians shot down most of these suicide drones yet they're saying it was proof Russia was targeting civilians by where they struck... Are these are the same drones that hit Saudi oil refineries that were protected by US Patriot missiles?

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They must have pre-deployed the quantum computers destined for the next-gen British Challenger tanks on a trial basis to Ukraine.
Q1: Are we getting owned? Y
Q2: But are we still winning: Y

Pridneprovskaya TPP (installed capacity 1765 MW) is burning, hit by two Kh-101 today.

Temstar said:

So really Russians have discovered there's actually a huge gap in between the low end and high end that are not covered by anything. Hence you see the Russians try to rush things like LMUR, Lancet and that other Item 305 into action to try to fill that role. Shahed-136 just happened to slot into that gap quite well for the Russians. But even so you can see Russians while they are very happy with low cost and thus high volume of Shahed-136 are not quite satisfied with the punch. Hence you see them thinking about buying Iranian ballistic missiles as well as larger kamikaze drones, to fill the upper bound of that missing middle band

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Due to the INF treatry Russia doesn't have ground lanched longer than 300km range munitions, designs and manufacturing capacity.

USA scraped it in 2019 august, means there wasn't enought time to re-calibrate the Russian industry and create new designs.

Iran hasn't got restrictions like this, and developed huge insdustrial capacity for this kind of munitions.

Shadow_Whomel said:

I don't understand why the drone operator didn't prioritise attacking the radar in favour of the missile when he spotted it.

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I have the same tought, but afterwards it could be to distinguish between real and decoy targets.

The Lancet cheap and plenty, so it is easy to screen out the decoys, and if one position has the real system then faster, but more expensive missiles can take care of the radar.


Most likelly there are hundreds of drone launches each day for suspected targets, and only one-two find something that worth more expensive missile.

AssassinsMace said:

Interesting they're claiming the Ukrainians shot down most of these suicide drones yet they're saying it was proof Russia was targeting civilians by where they struck... Are these are the same drones that hit Saudi oil refineries that were protected by US Patriot missiles?

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Of course they claim that they intercept almost all of them, it is called propaganda, or how they explain to population that they are defenseless and are forced to sit in dark during winter due to lack of electricity.

If we count photo/video. They manage to intercept around 20% of UAVs(there is 4-5 photo/video of succesfull strikes on each photo/video of possible interception). And they are forced to use aviation for this. Which make it vulnerable to Russian antiAir.