Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[tonyh29]

Story in the Express ( yeah i know)  that Putin had a cardiac arrest last night  ..

The Telegram channel General SVR, reportedly run by a former Russian lieutenant-general, declared in a post:"Security officers of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who were on duty at the residence, heard noise and sounds of falling coming from the president's bedroom.

"Two security officers immediately followed into the president's bedroom and saw Putin lying on the floor next to the bed and an overturned table with food and drinks."

General SVR continued: "Putin convulsively arched while lying on the floor, rolling his eyes."

Doctors later reportedly arrived a "resuscitated" Putin having "previously determined that the president was in cardiac arrest."

 

[villa89]

Their source is a telegram channel run by an alleged insider....hmm.....

[Xann]

On 05/09/2023 at 12:25, Xann said:

 

 

600 days into the war, and they're still in Putin's Russia.

Updated list of companies still trading.

https://www.yalerussianbusinessretreat.com/

[bickster]

33 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Putin had a cardiac arrest last night  .

Which Putin? The real one or one of the body doubles  

There've been quite a few Putin medical episode rumours in this war and just about zero of them have been true. Even Kadyrov has died three times I think

[Anthony]

1 hour ago, ender4 said:

Won't they be fixing some, making more, servicing old ones whilst the war is going on?

Also don't they have like a billion tanks? (slight exaggeration)

Yeah, fixing and cannibalising - all very normal. We do it in the UK and we're not even at war.

The problem is that due to sanctions things massively complicate things for Russia. Sanctions will never stop the imports, but will make it harder/slower/more expensive/less reliable to get some of the more high tech spares.

All that said, the rate a which they've been losing equipment in the last week or so, I doubt even the US on a full wartime economy footing would be able to replace the losses.

And it's only a million tanks. Get it right. Attention to detail is important.

[Genie]

Keeping them fuelled must be a monumental task. They must do less than 1mpg I’d have thought

[Xann]

18 minutes ago, bickster said:

...Kadyrov has died three times I think...

There were some great stories around the time of his last death.

Supposedly local police were called to catch him after he went on the run from hospital in his pyjamas.

The story went that when the found him, he was a gibbering wreck, completely bombed by his meds.

[magnkarl]

11 minutes ago, Xann said:

There were some great stories around the time of his last death.

Supposedly local police were called to catch him after he went on the run from hospital in his pyjamas.

The story went that when the found him, he was a gibbering wreck, completely bombed by his meds.

As opposed to normally, you mean?  

Remember that time when he challenged someone to a fist fight on Twitter before he was barred?

[sidcow]

Isn't the point on their equipment that they're operating well beyond their operating design capacity.  For example tanks and artillery are supposed to have their barrels removed and reconditioned every set number of firings.

Helicopters especially need a lot of downtime (@blandy?) of maintenance due to a lot of moving parts.  But Russia aren't able to do this currently due to pressing needs on the front line.  So their barrels are likely to explode and helicopters fall out of the sky.

Plus with the never ending corruption in the military who knows how many of their inventory actually exists or is in any kind of actual reasonable working condition.

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Helicopters especially need a lot of downtime (@blandy?) of maintenance due to a lot of moving parts. 

True, but it’s slightly more complicated than that. They need a lot of maintenance manhours per flying hour, which doesn’t necessarily equate to calendar hours. It means more people working for more of their shift. But there’s also scheduled servicing, taking the chopper out of use and doing deeper maintenance for a month or whatever, every so many flying hours. So yeah, they’re Labour and parts intensive and you’re right, skipping or skimping on that work leads to crashes and/ or multiple defects and inoperability.

[bickster]

5 hours ago, magnkarl said:

Russia has never lost as much armour and artillery as they have in the last week so far in the war. The same goes for air-assets.

If Russia had 100 or so KA52s before the war, and are reported to have lost something like 58, how many would they likely have that are serviceable left after such a long campaign? We must be getting to a point where APC's, tanks, helicopters and artillery systems are getting sparse to say the least.

Oryx has it as 59 visually confirmed losses of KA-52. There will also be more as there have been at least 3 reportedly lost fairly recently in non-combat scenarios well away from the front (which hints at maintenance issues)

Also Wiki has it as 146 KA-52 at the outset and at least 4 more of a new variant were delivered in January this year.

[magnkarl]

44 minutes ago, bickster said:

Oryx has it as 59 visually confirmed losses of KA-52. There will also be more as there have been at least 3 reportedly lost fairly recently in non-combat scenarios well away from the front (which hints at maintenance issues)

Also Wiki has it as 146 KA-52 at the outset and at least 4 more of a new variant were delivered in January this year.

Yep. But how much of a percentage of those 146 do you think were running at the onset? I've read somewhere that our airforce is at something like 50% readiness and could potentially push that number up to 70% given time and resources.

@blandy probably would be able to estimate.. (long air-tech post incoming )

[Xann]

Putin also needs to leave some kit around Russia's borders and in areas the locals might become restless?

Japan has already noticed equipment facing them has been put on trains heading west.

[blandy]

2 hours ago, magnkarl said:

@blandy probably would be able to estimate.. (long air-tech post incoming )

No idea. I've not much knowledge around choppers, and none recent. I know when I was temporarily working on an American base in Sicilly, we were next to a Black Hawk squadron and so chatted with the US ground crews for the choppers. They told us how many manhours it took to keep each chopper flying, and it was around the same as our jets (which were way more complex in terms of the kit on board, and which were not performing as well as we'd have liked at the time), so maybe half to 2/3rds at the start would have been flyable (i.e. serviceable, or safe to fly, but with what are called "acceptable deferred defects/faults") - which is in line with western availability, as you rightly say. Robbing aircraft is standard, as @Anthony mentioned, but obviously the Christmas trees are then a very long way from being airworthy so the fleet numbers are much lower.

But I don't know what Russian availability or "safety standards" are applied here. Probably nowhere near ours, though.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

 

But I don't know what Russian availability or "safety standards" are applied here. Probably nowhere near ours, though.

 

I was going to take a punt that Russian kit, even the top end stuff, might actually have a greater tolerance or crudity than ‘equivalent’ western kit?

Like the old ak-47 scenario, where it was always a bit shit, always jammed, but produced and used on a massive scale. But essentially a blacksmith could make one and a farmer could fire one and most of them worked most of the time.

Kind of.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

 

I was going to take a punt that Russian kit, even the top end stuff, might actually have a greater tolerance or crudity than ‘equivalent’ western kit?

Like the old ak-47 scenario, where it was always a bit shit, always jammed, but produced and used on a massive scale. But essentially a blacksmith could make one and a farmer could fire one and most of them worked most of the time.

Kind of.

That sounds plausible. I wonder if, though, older, simpler helicopters which might break down less for the reasons you say, might not also be fatigued (structurally) and so more prone to structural failure, which is one of the main risks with chopper safety - particularly around rotor mechanisms, engines and landing gear even. But as I said, I dunno.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

That sounds plausible. I wonder if, though, older, simpler helicopters which might break down less for the reasons you say, might not also be fatigued (structurally) and so more prone to structural failure, which is one of the main risks with chopper safety - particularly around rotor mechanisms, engines and landing gear even. But as I said, I dunno.

I dunno is not acceptable.

Just bullshit us so we think we’re a bit more in the know.

[sidcow]

29 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I dunno is not acceptable.

Just bullshit us so we think we’re a bit more in the know.

**** yeah!

[sidcow]

Yeah, rather like cars I expect older equipment breaks down for different reasons to new equipment.

Your brand new car is more likely to have a software problem or engine management system failure.

You're ancient car unless maintained absolutely meticulously is likely to be a rot box that suffers catastrophic structural failure and the brakes fly apart, ESPECIALLY when you drive it hard.

I would expect Russian military hardware to in the main not be as technologically advanced as ours to not need as much intricate maintenance, but probably prone to just falling to pieces if pushed hard....like in a war type situation after sitting in a damp warehouse with holes in the roof for 30 years.

But probably more easily fixed with WD40.

[bickster]

37 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

I was going to take a punt that Russian kit, even the top end stuff, might actually have a greater tolerance or crudity than ‘equivalent’ western kit?

Like the old ak-47 scenario, where it was always a bit shit, always jammed, but produced and used on a massive scale. But essentially a blacksmith could make one and a farmer could fire one and most of them worked most of the time.

Kind of.

The Ka-52 didn't properly enter service until 2011, it's their most recently designed attack helicopter and obviously their most sophisticated too

It's no AK-47