The War in the Ukraine

MortyandRick said:

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But more importantly, how is Russia mitigating the long range drones attacks on its refineries ?

That hits at the heart of Russian economy and logistics. They better figure that out. Their resilient economy was one of the surprises during this war. Question is how long they can stay resilient.

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It feels like the Russians could massively reduce the amount of damage they take if they can just add radar/optimal guidance to their AAA guns.

The number of times I have seen footage of Ukrainian drones just fly in a straight line through comical levels of Russian AAA unharmed is simply ridiculous.

Nobody seen Lindsey Graham body. All the "intelligence trained/paid media pundits" in US and "storyline" given out by Intel is that he had some heart issue. For a Senator who died, there will be funeral/casket and period of grieving/visitation. There's none of that and his sister quickly appointed. You can tell all the Senate/US establishment in cahoots/paid actors controlling US population thru their media, Congress. Really a big Truman show where the average American citizen really living in brainwashed country. One theory out there, his body mangled so bad by a Russian hypersonic Oreshnik strike that they have to quickly cover it up to avoid WW3 starting between US/Russia. And they can't prepare his body for a funeral. The FBI sent in is to do cleanup and setting of evidences in his residence.

Tam said:

Not easy but they have to hit the entire chain the moment drone components arrived on ship to Ukraine; transported from Odessa to Kiev or wherever the assembly plant is; hit the assembly area; hit where the drone components are stored; hit where the completed drone is stored; hit where the drones are launched.

You would have to figure out that it means ships, port infrastructure, highways or at least their gas stations, any large structure like barracks, malls, factories and warehouses, and trucks, more trucks, truck parking lots.

Not going to happen overnight but gradually it means less places to store them, less trucks to move them, less places to assemble them. Hitting power stations to cause rotational blackouts is also a factor.

At the same time Russians need to further beef up the number of fire teams, more trucks with machine guns, introduce robot turrets, AA vehicles, further increase production of MANPADS, convert every helicopter to one carrying a machine gun, produce more attack helicopters to intercept drones, produce more interceptor drones. Particularly interesting are mother ship drones like a Gerbera carrying four FPV drones, then drop each drone to intercept a UAV then after all the drones are expended the mother drone expends itself on a target.

The refineries need to be smaller, more built further inland, covered with cages and turrets.

Turrets should be added to the ships or have patrol ships mount turrets or MANPADS. Russian Navy ships are loaded for bear for long range anti ship engagement. Once the ship armaments run out, the crew should have supplemental MANPADS.

Russians do destroy a lot of drones so they are in the right track but it's the few that escaped that causes enormous damage. It's a matter of math where they could reduce the drone stream so enhanced air defenses could take them out 100 percent.

It's probably the reason why Ukrainian drones don't attack Russian armament and drone factories, at least not lately because their local defense shoot them down completely.

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That's a lot of work that the Russians have to do. They definitely need more manpads and patrols. That's seems like easy to do.

But the other stuff will take time and these hits have been going on for 6 months. I would hope they have adjusted faster by now

They should have put drone interceptors and Manpads on those ships and around refineries ages ago. How long can they sustain taking this damage?

Are there still long gas line ups ?

I suspect the starlink jamming is also incomplete.

If it was any other country that made starlink, you'd be sure the US and west would be shouting that they are militerizing space and taking up orbital locations at the expense of other countries. But since it's the US doing it, not one peep.

Footage shows a Russian FAB-3000 aerial bomb striking a temporary deployment point of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near the settlement of Shchurovo in the Donbas. Troops from the Ukrainian Army's 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade were holding defensive positions in the building. The strike was carried out by a Su-34 frontline fighter-bomber.

plawolf said:

It feels like the Russians could massively reduce the amount of damage they take if they can just add radar/optimal guidance to their AAA guns.

The number of times I have seen footage of Ukrainian drones just fly in a straight line through comical levels of Russian AAA unharmed is simply ridiculous.

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Could be fresh militia rushed into combat struggling to deal with the recoil of heavy machine gun.


This is a 12.7mm machine gun, equivalent to a .50 caliber. This one is a YakB with four barrels, coming from a Hind. Note the square tablet used as a targeting sight. It's the one like this.


The targeting system is surprisingly simple. It uses a multispectral camera and that buzzword called AI. From this video you can also see a search radar.


I see more and more of these systems being put into the field now. It can be adapted to different machine guns like the Zu-23, the NSV and the Kord, even clustered AKs.

MortyandRick said:

That's a lot of work that the Russians have to do. They definitely need more manpads and patrols. That's seems like easy to do.

But the other stuff will take time and these hits have been going on for 6 months. I would hope they have adjusted faster by now

They should have put drone interceptors and Manpads on those ships and around refineries ages ago. How long can they sustain taking this damage?

Are there still long gas line ups ?

I suspect the starlink jamming is also incomplete.

If it was any other country that made starlink, you'd be sure the US and west would be shouting that they are militerizing space and taking up orbital locations at the expense of other countries. But since it's the US doing it, not one peep.

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There has been some line ups yes, but recently Crimea has reopened civilian gas purchases and increased electrical power availability, and in the Krasnodar region, around 80 stations reopened. Price of gas is high, but it beats buying them off three times the price from a military fuel tanker because the gas stations were destroyed by Gerans.

There's a lot of work to be done with the Starlink jamming, the range of which is only 20km. But at the least they can prioritize the refineries, defense industries and large ammo depots. But if the enemy drones uses AI, the Starlink jamming won't matter as much.


Locomotive taken out by a Geran-4 Seeker, the remnants of the drone found near the train wreck.


Burning ship off the coast of Odessa was meant to deliver fuel and lubricants to the Ukrainian military.


EU fails to adopt new Russian sanctions and freeze oil price cap.


Something burning in Slavyansk, hit by a Russian drone despite the netting. A city's days is numbered once you got your enemy's drones flying over it.

I think the core issue for Russia is that Ukrainian have brought the cost of strikes so low that vital supply routes are being struck at with impunity going towards Crimea. The lines and high cost of fuel is not a blip or short term thing. Those fp-2s are so simple there's no way to stop them from being manufactured, retribution strikes will do nothing for slowing down the fire control Ukraine has over the major roads.

Any major AA systems being fed into the peninsula is basically just drone bait at this point, not sure this is something solvable by Russia. You going to have a guy on a AA mount behind every fuel truck headed to Crimea?

tankphobia said:

I think the core issue for Russia is that Ukrainian have brought the cost of strikes so low that vital supply routes are being struck at with impunity going towards Crimea. The lines and high cost of fuel is not a blip or short term thing. Those fp-2s are so simple there's no way to stop them from being manufactured, retribution strikes will do nothing for slowing down the fire control Ukraine has over the major roads.

Any major AA systems being fed into the peninsula is basically just drone bait at this point, not sure this is something solvable by Russia. You going to have a guy on a AA mount behind every fuel truck headed to Crimea?

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Apparently in key junctions.

But let's not forget, interceptor drones. The Russian drone crews are especially good at it and publish compilations of drone kills almost daily. One particular Rubicon operator had as much as 250 drone kills.

The interceptor drones uses AI to lock in on a target, while FPV drones doing the intercepting are relying on skill.



Let's not forget that Russian drones and guided munitions are also destroying Ukrainian drones and drone operators on the ground day by day, hour by hour, targeting launching centers, depots, control points and logistics.


Offshore gas terminal near Odessa gets hit by Gerans and is burning.

abc123 said:

Yeah, good luck with that. Far more likely that he will ( if he isn't allready ) bleed Russia to death...

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That has been a Euro wet dream since Napolean, and everyone who is unversed in history or too desperate to heed it will repeat the fanciful wish. You can drink the ocean dry before bleeding Russia dead.

tankphobia said:

I think the core issue for Russia is that Ukrainian have brought the cost of strikes so low that vital supply routes are being struck at with impunity going towards Crimea. The lines and high cost of fuel is not a blip or short term thing. Those fp-2s are so simple there's no way to stop them from being manufactured, retribution strikes will do nothing for slowing down the fire control Ukraine has over the major roads.

Any major AA systems being fed into the peninsula is basically just drone bait at this point, not sure this is something solvable by Russia. You going to have a guy on a AA mount behind every fuel truck headed to Crimea?

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There are many things the Russians could be doing to make their lives much easier in terms of dealing with these Ukrainian attacks. Some of these they are not doing for political reasons, some for technical reasons, and some apparently for pride reasons.

The far and away biggest and most effective thing the Russians can do that will bring an almost immediate massive relief is to stop the Ukrainians from using NATO ISR assets in their kill chain while operating right up to Russian national airspace.

If the Ukrainians can’t have uninterrupted, timely and high precision tracking and targeting data, the effectiveness of their drone attacks will fall off a cliff and/or the costs of such drone attacks will skyrocket.

The second most impactful thing the Russians can do is rush build AWACS and get them on station. That will give them much longer reaction times so they can vector in air and other assets to interdict Ukrainian drone swarms to deal with the saturation attacks style they have been using to overwhelm Russia’s stretched defences. They can home grow these, or they can swallow their pride and just cobble some together North Korean style using Chinese components.

Finally, they can swallow their pride and formally request to buy Chinese weapons. While China has refrained from giving lethal aid to Russia, China has also reiterated its position that it has the right to normal trade with Russia, which includes weapons. To me, it looks like that thus far the Russians have been too prideful to ask China to purchase weapons at a high enough level and China is just shrugging and saying we are not going to go out of our way to incur the wrath of the Europeans to help you out if you can’t even bring yourself to ask us for our help.

But the timing is actually ripening for such a move as the Europeans cannot help themselves from needlessly pissing China off, and have repeatedly shown beyond doubt that despite Trump, they are happy to be America’s abused bitch. At the same time European economic performance continue to circle the toilet and the EU market is becoming increasingly marginal to China. So at this point I don’t think China would be particularly bothered about giving the EU a massive fuck-off slap, especially if the Russians time their ask right just as the EU launches a new fresh provocation against China.

Indeed, I would suggest that China has been following Britain’s 6 Step guide to destroying Empires pretty damn closely, and supplying arms to Russia on a truly industrial scale for a direct clash with NATO actually ticks multiple boxes on that checklist.

- rent an army (the Russians)
- fight in a periphery theatre (Europe)
- don’t fight the enemy main force (America) directly (could be easily done by raising tensions in East Asia at the same time and make it look like China is about to move on Taiwan to pin the bulk of American military power in the Pacific; why not also co-ordinate with Iran to kick things off in the ME again got good measure).


I don’t think this has escaped the notice of the Europeans, least of which the British, which is why we are starting to hear alarm bells being rung about the risk of Russia preparing for a direct clash with NATO.