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Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine


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38 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

It was a throwaway comment rather than any actual knowledge of a specific operation.  
 

But I often view flightradar24. It’s amazing how often US tanker aircraft loiter in an area where no other planes are apparent.  It could be refuelling something covert.  It could be making the Russian’s think they are refuelling something covert.  We’ll never know.  
 

In a slightly connected topic.  Finland and Sweden siding with NATO makes it very hard for Russia to gets its subs in/out of the Baltic without being detected.  There was recently an incursion into Danish waters by a Russian Navy vessel.  If I was a betting man, that was to mask something coming in/out of the Baltic. Or was it to make us think that? 

Yeah, I guessed it was throwaway.

With the tanker aircraft, there's a few things - firstly they often loiter, because they might be refuelling a number of other aircraft, over a period of several hours even. Or they may just have a flight plan which puts them in the right place ahead of time. If they're refuelling LO aircraft (there might be Nighthawks and B2s somewhere in the area, so it's a possibility), then you'd imagine they'd turn off their own civil modes on the IFF/SSR transponders, perhaps, though a number of aircraft use Tacan to home in on tankers - there's a specific Tacan mode for that. But then any kind of transmissions, whether Tacan or UHF radio render a LO aircraft (for a brief period) "visible".

As for the submarine passages out of the Baltic, I know from my days on asw that it's a major task to track Russian subs, particularly once they leave that narrow channel - it requires a lot of aircraft and ships to keep a track of a nuclear sub out in the wide Ocean. DE subs less so, as they have to surface, and they make a lot more noise.

I imagine there's a lot of effort going on tracking and monitoring Russian vessels and aircraft of all kinds, and hoovering up SigInt around Ukraine too  - with Rivet joints and Awacs and other aircraft all taking part. How much of that you can see on FlightRadar or Flight24 or whatever it's called, I dunno, but I think others have spotted stuff over the past few months. 

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27 minutes ago, hippo said:

And the sanctions applied on Russia not effective or are thet not applied as rigorously as we are lead to beleive.

Same questions about arms supplied by the best.

It would seem a longish war would suit Russia just fine - they are happy to throw partially trained troops at it  - Id also bet that the high energy costs will severley test the wests resolve over the winter months.

 

Tbh I’m not so sure that a long war would suit Russia just fine. Historically Russia has been defeated twice due to the same conditions we’re now seeing. One being Chechnya 1, and the other being Afghanistan. 
This war is forcing a massive change in global energy consumption, and I’m not so sure fossile fuels are getting out on a good side come the end of this. 

Pretty much all nato nations are subsidising solar heavily due to what’s happened, add in the nuclear plants in Finland and other nations and Europe should hopefully be able to stand on its own with Norway and Scotland as its oil suppliers.

Finlnd’s two nuclear plants dwarf much of what’s been made before.

Add in that NATO will have 300.000 soldiers stationed on Russia’s border and you create an arms race Russia can’t compete with.

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1 hour ago, bickster said:

Your average Russian tourist is not your average Russian

That was my initial reaction as well, but wondering if that would really be true of Russian tourists in Turkey? You can get a cheap ferry across the Black Sea, and Turkey itself is a relatively cheap place to stay. Imagine it would be an affordable option for a surprisingly big proportion of the population in western Russia. Definitely middle classes, but not necessarily in any way associated with the elites.

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2 hours ago, KentVillan said:

That was my initial reaction as well, but wondering if that would really be true of Russian tourists in Turkey? You can get a cheap ferry across the Black Sea, and Turkey itself is a relatively cheap place to stay. Imagine it would be an affordable option for a surprisingly big proportion of the population in western Russia. Definitely middle classes, but not necessarily in any way associated with the elites.

You have a point, I didn't realise how much the Turkish Lira has tanked recently even against the Ruble (it was 9 rubles to the Lira in March, now its only 3 Rubles to the Lira)

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1 minute ago, bickster said:

You have a point, I didn't realise how much the Turkish Lira has tanked recently even against even the Ruble (it was 9 rubles to the Lira in March, now its only 3 Rubles to the Lira)

I was in Istanbul for 5 days earlier this month, and yes, it was very cheap for meals etc.  Obviously you need to avoid the expensive places pitched at the well-off tourists but it was very good.  It was no surprise to see a few Russian families enjoying a cheap break abroad and from what we could tell, they were treated no different to other tourists.  In some of the restaurants, we noticed (or at least what we thought to be) staff attempting to converse in basic Russian making the kids laugh.  

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If I was in Ukraine now I'd stay in my basement for a couple of days. Seems like a great excuse for Putin to accidentally send a cruise missile to a Supermarket or School or Church or Hospital or Cinema. 

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25 minutes ago, sidcow said:

If I was in Ukraine now I'd stay in my basement for a couple of days. Seems like a great excuse for Putin to accidentally send a cruise missile to a Supermarket or School or Church or Hospital or Cinema. 

Hmm.  I mean I don’t know, but I’ve thought for a while that the revised aim of Russia has been to capture the two eastern territories and then negotiate and claim victory, so part of that, I’d wager is to continue these terror attacks on places they can’t take, to “incentivise” Ukraine to agree. Thing is though, it’s a double risky path, firstly because it may well be a further disincentive to Ukraine and secondly it may drag in even more support from the west and elsewhere for Ukraine.

Theres also the possibility of Ukraine launching an effort to retake the captured territory, though it doesn’t seem like they have the wherewithal to do that.

Christ knows…

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Russia says that expanding NATO is destabilising. 

They invade and pummel to death another country with democratically elected leaders who were doing no one (in the grand scheme of things) any harm.  They have no right to call anything else in the world destabilising. 

Their absolute audacity is breathtaking.  They are completely trolling the world. 

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3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Russia says that expanding NATO is destabilising. 

They invade and pummel to death another country with democratically elected leaders who were doing no one (in the grand scheme of things) any harm.  They have no right to call anything else in the world destabilising. 

Their absolute audacity is breathtaking.  They are completely trolling the world. 

Yep, they’ve completely lost the plot now. 

Firing missiles into a shopping centre with 1000 people inside whilst the G7 were meeting was just insanity.

I think they’re trying to provoke a reaction from the West to sell at home as justification for their illegal war.

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1 hour ago, Genie said:

Yep, they’ve completely lost the plot now. 

Firing missiles into a shopping centre with 1000 people inside whilst the G7 were meeting was just insanity.

I think they’re trying to provoke a reaction from the West to sell at home as justification for their illegal war.

I have a different view.  I don’t think Russia was targeting the shopping centre.  I think they were targeting something nearby and missed due to poor quality weapons, poor training and unprofessional troops.  They are a third rate military with third rate equipment.  

The loss of civilian life is tragic.  But these Russian savages being unable to achieve anything without a mass bombardment shows how poorly they would perform against a modern army with AirPower. 
 

 

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Yeah I’m erring on the side of it being poor targeting / weaponry rather than intentional targeting of the mall, not that it makes it any better of course.

The longer this goes on and appears to escalate (with the news today of Sweden and Finland joining NATO) it feels only a matter of time before it becomes a full blown world war 3, all its going to take is one trigger happy and unbalanced Russian to fire on a NATO territory / unit and that’s it.

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22 hours ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

Well done Jens, pretty big news

All we had to do was bow down to Erdogan and his ridiculous claims, agree to sell weapons to him and brand a bunch of innocent people as terrorists and promise to extradite them to Turkey where they will be tortured or worse. Yay!

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1 hour ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Yeah I’m erring on the side of it being poor targeting / weaponry rather than intentional targeting of the mall, not that it makes it any better of course.

I watched a very compelling YouTube video on the matter. Apparently the fuel source in missiles is suspended in a solid .  The actual propellant should be distributed evenly within that solid.  If missiles are poorly produced or stored incorrectly that propellant slowly moves within the solid and "pools" on one side.  When the missile is launched it will veer off course as soon as the ignition reaches the pool.  It explained that the recent boomerang missile that hit its own launcher had probably been stored in one position  and in the wrong conditions. That caused the majority of the propellant to be on one side. 

If that's true (It seems a likely explanation to me) it suggests that a large number of high  precision missiles that Russia have are no longer capable of high precision hits. 

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I think Belarus might be the tipping point in this conflict, if they enter it’s not unlikely that Poland and a few other NATO countries will intervene and oust an already unpopular Lukashenko. The Belarusian foreign fighters actually fighting for Ukraine is rising by the day and these guys will likely return with a completely different view on what their country should be like, be well trained and equipped and also very likely be able to get more Belarusian soldiers over to their side. 

Russia may be the land of the lost, but we should be able to pick off Putin’s non nuclear allies by any means possible until he has no one left.

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