War Machine

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Vinty said:
The Palestinian authorities are nothing more than a group of Uncle Toms, policing their fellow Palestinians on behalf of Israel.
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A Palestinian view of this aspect is ok they talk to a Palestinian who then talks to an Israeli.
 
ajohn said:
A Palestinian view of this aspect is ok they talk to a Palestinian who then talks to an Israeli.
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Exactly. How can they consider themselves a free people living in their own country when they have to ask a foreign power for permission to build a parking lot? This is the crux of the dissent in Ukraine towards Russia: an independent nation, living under their own laws and governed by a freely elected assembly.
 
When the Ukrainians finally take to the skies in their expensive American F-16s they'll find Russian pilots queuing up to take a pot shot at 'em since
Fores, a Russian company that produces equipment for oil drilling, said that it would pay 15 million rubles, or about $170,000, to the first pilot who shoots down an F-16. The first dozen of F-16s are expected to arrive in Ukraine within weeks as their pilots complete their six month training; a basic course to master the aircraft and English language needed to operate the complex weapons system.

But 50 years after its inception and with the emergence of new generations of fighter jets, it is unlikely to become a game-changer in the Russia-Ukraine war, observers said. The engine’s air intake is located too low and can swallow pebbles from potholed Ukrainian airstrips – that can also be dangerous to the plane’s small wheels. Another problem is the missiles will most likely have a range of 120km – while Russian missiles can fly up to 300km. These days, the Ukrainian Air Force has US-made GBU precision-guided bombs that can glide for about 100km to their targets. Ukraine’s top brass hopes to get AIM-120 air-to-air missiles that could put an end to Russia’s biggest battlefield advantage.

In the past year, Russian planes didn’t have to fly over the actual Ukrainian positions as their heavy KAB bombs can glide for dozens of kilometres to precisely destroy the most fortified buildings. The KABs have become a “miracle weapon that brings results and practically has no countermeasures,” Deep State, a Telegram channel with links to the Ukrainian military, wrote in March.

The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway pledged to supply a total of 85 F-16s by 2028 as they receive far more advanced F-35 fighter jets from Washington. It’s enough for four squadrons – but is far from the 120 aircraft Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked the West for to counter the 300 Russian planes. The newest Ukrainian fighter jet is a Su-27 made in 1991 – and other aircraft are often “twice as old as their pilots,” Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said in televised remarks in 2023. Kyiv has about 50 MiGs-29 and two dozen Sukhoi 27 fighter jets whose notoriously flawed radars have short detection range and can be easily jammed by Russians...
 
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Allahu Akhbar@Al Jazeera
 
I found some wonderment in this, a comment on oilprice.com, at several levels:

A fire ignited by a drone attack on an oil depot in the southern Russian region of Rostov has gone into its second day with local emergency services still trying to put it out.

According to a Reuters report, the drone attack had been carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine.

Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and other energy infrastructure have become a fixture this year, with drones the weapon of choice for conducting the strikes.

The series of strikes has affected Russia’s refining capacity and earlier this year led the U.S. to call on the Ukrainians to stop targeting refineries in order to avoid a fuel price spike ahead of the November elections.

This week’s attack on the oil depot is the second since the start of the month in the region of Rostov. In early June, Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Novosakhatinsk, causing another fire and prompting the suspension of work at the facility.

They also attacked an oil depot in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces, using a kamikaze drone, attacked an oil depot on the territory of the Stary Oskol urban district. As a result of the explosion, one of the tanks caught fire. Four fire crews quickly extinguished the fire. The blast wave blew out the windows in the security building. There were no casualties,” the governor of Belgorod said at the time.

The amount of refining capacity affected by Ukrainian drone attacks since the start of the year was estimated at around 600,000 barrels daily in April by Gunvor, the commodity trading major. According to JP Morgan, the amount was much higher, at 900,000 barrels daily. Repairs are ongoing at many sites but it seems the Ukrainians are not heeding the Biden administration’s advice to stop targeting oil infrastructure.

"advice"?
 
Justin Passing said:
I found some wonderment in this, a comment on oilprice.com, at several levels:

A fire ignited by a drone attack on an oil depot in the southern Russian region of Rostov has gone into its second day with local emergency services still trying to put it out.

According to a Reuters report, the drone attack had been carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine.

Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and other energy infrastructure have become a fixture this year, with drones the weapon of choice for conducting the strikes.

The series of strikes has affected Russia’s refining capacity and earlier this year led the U.S. to call on the Ukrainians to stop targeting refineries in order to avoid a fuel price spike ahead of the November elections.

This week’s attack on the oil depot is the second since the start of the month in the region of Rostov. In early June, Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Novosakhatinsk, causing another fire and prompting the suspension of work at the facility.

They also attacked an oil depot in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces, using a kamikaze drone, attacked an oil depot on the territory of the Stary Oskol urban district. As a result of the explosion, one of the tanks caught fire. Four fire crews quickly extinguished the fire. The blast wave blew out the windows in the security building. There were no casualties,” the governor of Belgorod said at the time.

The amount of refining capacity affected by Ukrainian drone attacks since the start of the year was estimated at around 600,000 barrels daily in April by Gunvor, the commodity trading major. According to JP Morgan, the amount was much higher, at 900,000 barrels daily. Repairs are ongoing at many sites but it seems the Ukrainians are not heeding the Biden administration’s advice to stop targeting oil infrastructure.

"advice"?
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They could just as easily use the word 'plea' as America is desperate to avoid getting its hands dirty in this conflict but Ukraine has little choice but to hit Russian infrastructure in order to keep them at bay. Putin keeps rattling sabres about their involvement and went into a full on froth over Macrons notion to put NATO troops on the battlefield. Unofficially, we do have soldiers in situ but so long as the numbers remain small, Putin cannot make any political capital from them. Ukraine has to somehow conscript more soldiers in order to launch another counter-offensive. It's all they can do to hold th line at the moment.
 
Odds said:
When the Ukrainians finally take to the skies in their expensive American F-16s they'll find Russian pilots queuing up to take a pot shot at 'em since
Fores, a Russian company that produces equipment for oil drilling, said that it would pay 15 million rubles, or about $170,000, to the first pilot who shoots down an F-16. The first dozen of F-16s are expected to arrive in Ukraine within weeks as their pilots complete their six month training; a basic course to master the aircraft and English language needed to operate the complex weapons system.

But 50 years after its inception and with the emergence of new generations of fighter jets, it is unlikely to become a game-changer in the Russia-Ukraine war, observers said. The engine’s air intake is located too low and can swallow pebbles from potholed Ukrainian airstrips – that can also be dangerous to the plane’s small wheels. Another problem is the missiles will most likely have a range of 120km – while Russian missiles can fly up to 300km. These days, the Ukrainian Air Force has US-made GBU precision-guided bombs that can glide for about 100km to their targets. Ukraine’s top brass hopes to get AIM-120 air-to-air missiles that could put an end to Russia’s biggest battlefield advantage.

In the past year, Russian planes didn’t have to fly over the actual Ukrainian positions as their heavy KAB bombs can glide for dozens of kilometres to precisely destroy the most fortified buildings. The KABs have become a “miracle weapon that brings results and practically has no countermeasures,” Deep State, a Telegram channel with links to the Ukrainian military, wrote in March.

The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway pledged to supply a total of 85 F-16s by 2028 as they receive far more advanced F-35 fighter jets from Washington. It’s enough for four squadrons – but is far from the 120 aircraft Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked the West for to counter the 300 Russian planes. The newest Ukrainian fighter jet is a Su-27 made in 1991 – and other aircraft are often “twice as old as their pilots,” Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said in televised remarks in 2023. Kyiv has about 50 MiGs-29 and two dozen Sukhoi 27 fighter jets whose notoriously flawed radars have short detection range and can be easily jammed by Russians...
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The Al-Jazeera article you're quoting from is pretty poor. If the KAB bombs are a miracle weapon then the Small Diameter Bombs the F16 will be trucking in will also be so for Ukraine. In fact they already are when launched from the Ukrainian jets that have been converted for them, but those jets are overused.

The missile range for Russian kit quoted is for the S300 SAM system, nothing to do with AIM range. The Russians also can't put that anywhere near the front lines as Ukraine is punching them out with ATACAMs. Amusingly as the S300/400/500 are designed to shoot down tactical ballistic missiles.

There is negligible air to air combat as the effectiveness and number of SAM systems makes it very dangerous to operate near the front line for either side. The F16s will be bomb trucks to deliver SDBs and interceptors to shoot down drones and missiles that have been launched at Ukrainian infrastructure well behind the front lines.
 
IT Minion said:
The Al-Jazeera article you're quoting from is pretty poor. If the KAB bombs are a miracle weapon then the Small Diameter Bombs the F16 will be trucking in will also be so for Ukraine. In fact they already are when launched from the Ukrainian jets that have been converted for them, but those jets are overused.

The missile range for Russian kit quoted is for the S300 SAM system, nothing to do with AIM range. The Russians also can't put that anywhere near the front lines as Ukraine is punching them out with ATACAMs. Amusingly as the S300/400/500 are designed to shoot down tactical ballistic missiles.

There is negligible air to air combat as the effectiveness and number of SAM systems makes it very dangerous to operate near the front line for either side. The F16s will be bomb trucks to deliver SDBs and interceptors to shoot down drones and missiles that have been launched at Ukrainian infrastructure well behind the front lines.
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Do you have a source for all that info?

Some experts warned that using the F-16s will come with challenges, noting that Nato militaries would not deploy the planes without a wide range of other aircraft such as newer F-35s. But... welcomed a decision by Sweden to provide two Saab surveillance aircraft to Ukraine, saying they would provide crucial “in-the-air oversight” that would enhance the capabilities of the F-16s. He refused to comment on which missiles the F-16s would be equipped with, stating only that the jets would be given a “wide range of weapons”.

The Garundia

Real combat is an unforgiving arena for untested pilots, so they'll have to learn pdq to avoid becoming another statistic in this war.
 
They're not sending novice pilots, they're retraining experienced pilots on a new air frame. Russian standards of pilot training is way below NATO standards with half the number of hours of flight time a year. After an intensive F16 conversion course I don't think pilot quality is a key concern.

Various announcements have said Ukraine will be getting AAMRAMS with 120km range, which is less than the Russian R77 (300km) but again air to air combat isn't in the cards as Patriot batteries will swat Russian planes like sleeping bumblebees just like S300s would to any SU27s or F16s that get close.

AWACS is a big deal. Good for Sweden
 
While Pres. Putin was glad-handing in N. Korea and Vietnam this week, Ukrainian troops recaptured positions southwest of Vovchansk, the main prong of Russia’s incursion in Kharkiv, and reportedly recaptured the settlement of Tykhe, west of Vovchansk.

More good news for an embattled Ukrainian President who last week signed 10-year security agreements with Japan and the United States at the G7 summit in Apulia, Italy. The agreement with Japan would give Ukraine $4.5bn in military, humanitarian and financial aid this year alone, he said, although he declined to mention how much American aid was worth. It's going to take the country many years to pay these loans off and signals an all-in, sh!t or bust approach to ending this war in their favour.

Although Ukraine has signed agreements with 15 countries and has roughly another 15 such agreements under negotiation, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was considering making aid to Kyiv compulsory to ensure it remains “reliable and large scale”. Last month, the EU announced it would send Ukraine roughly $3bn a year in interest earned by Russian assets on its soil. It was not immediately clear if this sum would now be folded into the US loan. Russia has warned it would reciprocate any direct seizure of its assets on Western soil. Mikhail Zvinchuk, founder of a Kremlin-associated channel on the platform Telegram, told the Bosnian new service BanjaLuka.net that sanctions were having an effect on Russia’s defence industry and war economy.

Ukraine was not permitted to use US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) against targets in Russia, other than in the areas immediately north of Kharkiv, where the new incursion was launched on May 10. Biden reaffirmed that policy last week. They've been using drones of its own manufacture and last week said it had also used its own Neptune missiles on Russian soil to strike the oil facility in Chushka, east of Crimea, last week and in nearby Kavkaz on May 31. Their strikes have been particularly successful against air defence systems in Crimea, where it has destroyed 15 systems, according to Ukrainian military intelligence – three of them in the past two weeks. Kyril Budanov, the head of intelligence, said Russia had now resorted to stationing an experimental S-500 system there.

Al Jazz...
 
IT Minion said:
Amusingly as the S300/400/500 are designed to shoot down tactical ballistic missiles.
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As per the Patriot they are intended to shoot down aircraft as well as various missile types. They all have targeting limitations on range and altitude. Depends what is being aimed at eg
During a night time attack on the Kyiv region on May 4, 2023, Ukraine air defense claimed a hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile was shot down by a Patriot missile defence system.[5][149][150][151][152][153][154] Yurii Ihnat, the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, initially denied the claim of interception,[155] but on May 6 it was finally confirmed by Commander of the UAF Mykola Oleschuk.[151][152] Prior to this interception, intercepting a Kinzhal missile was only a "theoretical" capability.[156] Unnamed US officials claimed the missile was aimed at the Patriot system which intercepted it, and that the Ukrainians fired multiple Patriot missiles at different angles to intercept the Kinzhal missile.[157] A Pentagon spokesman later confirmed that Ukraine downed the Kinzhal missile
The most recent cost of a Patriot system I could find is $1,2b. $1b often mentioned. Missile production rate increased to 500 per year with an intent to get it higher. 650?

It appears some Patriots have been hit. Troops 60-70 to maintain and 3 to operate.
 
War is "interesting" after a fashion. So Patriot and similar. The the S-400 is highly rated. The 500???
Friendly fire incident. An F16 in combat mode picked up a Patriot and hit it with an ARM, US version HARM something or the other. These anti radar missile can be pretty simple. They essentially just home in on radar sources. The US appear to have a lead. MACH 4 against 3.5. Up to date? Speed is a limitation on these defence systems. The missiles can be air or ground launched. Put Patriot nearer the boarder ????? but some have been hit.
 
Russia on more of a war footing. Putin re org. He has pulled in an economics expert to tie the various state bodies together. He has already threatened some on what I assume is on the supply side with prison.

Aims seem to be to pull various depts together and work on increasing all arms supply rates, even newer weapons or adaptations.
 
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