The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread

rsemmes

Active Member
We have to be truly terrorized by the possibility of an invasion, when we talk about 2034.

Or confused. Rhetoric vs reality, maybe a lot of headlines, without any real action, or a very distant action, means that there is not real threat.

Within days of Russia launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Olaf Scholz announced a Zeitenwende, or historical “turning point”.
However, two years later, the German Council on Foreign Relations published a report saying Scholz’s transformation had yet “to deliver meaningful change”.
The reality of what Merz is offering Ukraine is somewhat more complex, as is what he can do to meet Nato’s wider demands of an expanding German army.
It may also be in office that Merz has been made more aware of complexities including the need for Ukrainians to have six months’ training on their use, and the implications of the German soldiers giving training inside Ukraine. The government has now retreated to a position of strategic ambiguity on what he will do, and focused on offering Ukraine a partnership to jointly build missiles.

 

PachkaSigaret

New Member
Disaster has struck strategic aviation at Olenya Airfield. Several TU-95 hit and destroyed. This will make Russia think twice about amassing any strategic aviation. I'm genuinely curious what method was used to penetrate so far north with FPVs.

https://x.com/squatsons/status/1929130780841640256

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1l0mg4h
Edit: Apparently footage has come out of drones being launched from a parked semi.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1l0mmlz
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
Disaster has struck strategic aviation at Olenya Airfield. Several TU-95 hit and destroyed. This will make Russia think twice about amassing any strategic aviation. I'm genuinely curious what method was used to penetrate so far north with FPVs.

https://x.com/squatsons/status/1929130780841640256

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1l0mg4h
Edit: Apparently footage has come out of drones being launched from a parked semi.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1l0mmlz
They were slowly amassed at a rented storage facility in Chelyabinsk. It appears at least 5 Russian aircraft were destroyed. Emphasis on "at least". Information is currently incomplete and it will be some time before the full picture becomes available. It appears one of the attacks was prevented from happening all together and the drone truck burned down because of actions by local civilians. Much has been said about the inadequacies of Russian airfield defenses. The lack of hangars, the lackadaisical attitude from commanders in rear units, the absence of drone defense teams, this was coming for a while. It's interesting to note that 5 bases were targeted, the two closer to the war zone claim successful defense and we don't have footage of hits. One was prevented by civilians. Two went off more or less as planned from the looks of it.

In terms of impact on Russian long-range strike capability, this certainly matters. But Russian long range strike has been moving away from large cruise missiles launched by long-range aviation towards a greater variety of smaller platforms. We've seen the new Banderol', we have Dan'-M munitions that can be launched from Mi-17s, and of course the wide variety of Shaheds and their cousins. There's also Iskanders, KN-23s, etc. Overall this operation is a big win for Ukraine but the immediate impact won't be all that great.

One other note, Russia does produce new Tu-160Ms at some sort of rate, but it's quite slow. Possibly ~1 aircraft per year. Theoretically all Tu-95s are slated for eventual replacement by them but this is a ways off. Compensating for these lost birds with new planes won't be easy. It will likely be done by shifting to the alternate options discussed above.

 
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vikingatespam

Well-Known Member
I dont think we should be surprised that an attack like this has happened. RU is too big to adequately defend and UKR has been thinking out of the box for years. I look forward to the BDA on these strikes.
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
I dont think we should be surprised that an attack like this has happened. RU is too big to adequately defend and UKR has been thinking out of the box for years. I look forward to the BDA on these strikes.
I don't think this is true. I think Russia could and should have done much in terms of security for rear end facilities. In general they should have been building HAS for the past ~20 years. Russia got a poor inheritance in that department since the USSR mostly built those in bases closer to NATO countries. Russia definitely has and had the means, and the knowledge. They should have put it to use. Russia airbase security is also not a question of how big Russia is but of how well Russia runs its airbases. For a long time the USSR left military units to conduct their own security. This was done in a different country, in a different society, and in a different military. Without arguing about whether it was wise or not, Russia needs to come up with a systematic approach to security for military facilities that accounts for the types of threats they currently face. Any reasonable risk assessment of Russian airbases would conclude that they're vulnerable to UAV strikes. And Russia concluded this. But instead of investing in appropriate infrastructure and adjusting the posture of base security forces on the fourth year of a major war, they put tires on top of bombers, and drew painted bombers on tarmacs in a silly attempt to confuse someone.

I point to the fact that often Ukrainian drone strikes fail to accomplish much of anything. Other times they're quite effective. Part of the difference is that some facilities and some units have learned their lessons, either like smart people from the mistakes of others, other like idiots from their own mistakes. And this very strike illustrates the same. Out of the 4 waves of drones that launched successfully against 4 bases only 2 seem to have had spectacular results worth gloating over. I think it's no coincidence that the bases where we don't have results from are also closer to the war zone and have been targeted before.

I also don't think we should be surprised that an attack like this has happened. Remember the attempt to hit the Caspian Fleet with longer ranged UAVs? It only failed because the strike itself was feeble. The base was woefully unprepared because it hadn't been targeted before. But I don't think this strike was doomed to succeed. Russia could and should have been better prepared. It's another institutional failure on the part of the Russian military, and it suggests that while they've learned lessons from this war, they've done a poor job of internalizing these lessons and ensuring their entire posture shifts appropriately.

EDIT: We've got some BDA footage coming out. It appears from two images that Russia lost 3 Tu-95MS destroyed, 1 damaged, and 1 Tu-22M3 destroyed in one image, in the other 3 Tu-22M3s destroyed. This is all from the Belaya airbase.

It also appears 4 launch trucks burned down without launching their drones.

The owner of the storage facility that was reportedly used to amass the drones was arrested, though I don't know that this matters much.

 
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KipPotapych

Well-Known Member
I have been away camping for a few days and this is the news I come back to, lol.

First real (but preliminary) BDA assessment from SAR imagery of the Belaya airbase, processed by an expert:

IMG_0364.jpeg

IMG_0363.jpeg

Source: https://x.com/CSBiggers/status/1929328562017886327

The best most recent estimates of the current Russian (“nuclear capable”) air fleet from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:


It will be interesting to see the final assessed damage from the events of today. SAR analysis is far from perfect and other air bases confirmation of any kind (drone footage we saw aside) is still pending.

What effect does it have on the actual war? Well, likely very little to none? Pending further confirmation from other bases, of course (Olenya base should have more damage than Belaya). The bottleneck in cruise missile launches to Ukraine is probably in missile production rather than the carriers.

Interesting observations:

- one of the videos I (and everyone else) saw showed Russian civilians throwing small boulders to the the other civilians that climbed the roof of the container with drones and appeared to be throwing the said boulders inside the container destroying the drones (rather heroic stuff by the man involved);
- in another video I saw, what I counted to be, 4 Russian cops (to be fair road police - Russia has cops and road cops, which are different animals, but can also be armed, depending on the type of duty, and likely were in this case) standing and doing absolutely nothing while drones were flying out of another container;
- in yet another video, the person filming was commenting that the road police was trying to shoot down one of the drones but missed (you can hear automatic weapon shooting in the background).

The operation “Spiderweb”, as the Ukrainians called it, was 18 months in the planning.


I saw somewhere that the drone firmware was (allegedly) dated April 2024, which, if true, would partially confirm the story. Another point here is what else is currently being planned. Yet another point, everyone else, including Iran, China, North Korea, “undesirables” not associated with any state are like:



The complexity here was in the planning, the setup was rather simple and not hard to replicate. In all likelihood, hardly any (or any at all?) bases (or a great deal of other “points of interest”) of any nation are prepared for this type of attack.

Last note on this subject, the photos of the FPVs in the containers provided by the SBU (see the article cited just above for an example) show unarmed drones with little space for munitions. That, in my opinion, raises questions about that part of the story provided.


In other news, Darapatyi, the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces and perceived to be one of the most capable officers in the Ukrainian military, had submitted his resignation:


Of course, could have been done with full expectation of the resignation being denied. Or could be the current situation on the ground (his promotion perfectly lines up with Russian advances slowing down into December and resignation with advances picking up again now). Many “theories”, really. I know that a lot of Ukrainians celebrated him becoming the ground forces commander and put a lot of hope into it.


The Geran UAVs in Ukraine summary for the month of May

IMG_0366.jpeg

Does anyone have any info on what they determine to be “lost by EW” vs those “not reported”, ie not intercepted (36% vs 18%)? I am very curious about that.


Britain backtracks on the commitment of spending 3% on defence:

IMG_0367.jpeg

The imminent Russian threat appears to be not as imminent. Especially now that they have less strategic bombers, lol (the usefulness of which is rather questionable, by the way, in the “strategic” sense to begin with - that being true for every other country operating such assets today).
 
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KipPotapych

Well-Known Member
One more thing. This is somewhat hilarious, provided who the man is and the “myth” of 40+ airframes being hit he is dismantling:

IMG_0368.jpeg

So far, from what I can see, the “confirmed hits” include 6 destroyed and 1 damaged Tu-95, 4 destroyed Tu-22M, and 1 damaged An-12. This includes all airfields presumably affected, SAR images I cited above, as well as confirmations from the drone footage already released. This, of course, could rise sharply (not very likely though) once more information becomes available. Quite a strike by Ukraine, nonetheless, and quite a failure, first and foremost, by the Russian counterintelligence (the cops doing f-all while watching drones flying out of the truck are also in the equation way down the line somewhere).


Edit: File under humour:

IMG_0374.jpeg
 
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wsb05

Member
They were slowly amassed at a rented storage facility in Chelyabinsk. It appears at least 5 Russian aircraft were destroyed. Emphasis on "at least". Information is currently incomplete and it will be some time before the full picture becomes available. It appears one of the attacks was prevented from happening all together and the drone truck burned down because of actions by local civilians. Much has been said about the inadequacies of Russian airfield defenses. The lack of hangars, the lackadaisical attitude from commanders in rear units, the absence of drone defense teams, this was coming for a while. It's interesting to note that 5 bases were targeted, the two closer to the war zone claim successful defense and we don't have footage of hits. One was prevented by civilians. Two went off more or less as planned from the looks of it.

In terms of impact on Russian long-range strike capability, this certainly matters. But Russian long range strike has been moving away from large cruise missiles launched by long-range aviation towards a greater variety of smaller platforms. We've seen the new Banderol', we have Dan'-M munitions that can be launched from Mi-17s, and of course the wide variety of Shaheds and their cousins. There's also Iskanders, KN-23s, etc. Overall this operation is a big win for Ukraine but the immediate impact won't be all that great.

One other note, Russia does produce new Tu-160Ms at some sort of rate, but it's quite slow. Possibly ~1 aircraft per year. Theoretically all Tu-95s are slated for eventual replacement by them but this is a ways off. Compensating for these lost birds with new planes won't be easy. It will likely be done by shifting to the alternate options discussed above.

Yes, the armed forces should have a team set a standard for military sites defense and another to civilian sites. There should be different recommendations according to each site importance.
This standard to be applied by all bases and audited by the committee.
At the same time Russia needs to be aware that it is not a superpower and that it is not technologically leading which will result a constant conventional challenge to its forces. They need to fortify their aircrafts hangers against conventional weapons and certain types should be protected against nuclear attacks as well. They have plenty of concrete and plenty of mountain chains.
 
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