Ukraine

[perrykneeham]

It sounds rather like Russia has pulled it's AWACS operations for the time being.

www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/24/7443471/

"Pravda" is an interesting echo, isn't it?

Anyway, this is a significant development. Not war-winning, but it suggests that Russia has no answer to Uke air defences. I suspect the crews have reached breaking point too: too many sorties and too many losses (not a small deal when you have a big crew and very fee options to get out if damaged).

[perrykneeham]

Ah. Here's the problem: these aircraft are dogshit.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_A-50

The detection range and loiter times are laughable.

[voice]

Again and again Putin is seeing very limited Western kit doing damage his forces have no answer for, from what I've read most of his recent gains have been incredibly costly, first world war mass charges with lots of casualties, winning just by shear numbers alone.

[perrykneeham]

.... and lack of ammo on the Uke side.

[perrykneeham]

"Mr Macron told a news conference on Monday evening: "We should not exclude that there might be a need for security that then justifies some elements of deployment.

"But I've told you very clearly what France maintains as its position, which is a strategic ambiguity that I stand by."

The French leader was speaking in Paris, which is hosting a crisis meeting in support of Ukraine attended by heads of European states, as well as the US and Canada."

There is something about the French language that makes everything sound like a treatise on the duality of existence.

[perrykneeham]

"The Russian corporation Rostec intends to restart production of the A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft.

Quote: "Of course, this aeroplane is needed. Of course, we'll do it. Not only does our army require it, but it also works well for export," said Sergey Chemezov, the head of the corporation."

www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/29/7444364/index.amp

That's odd. It's clearly a piece of dogshit and the export market amounts to 3 aircraft with a single Indian squadron. Not exactly the C-130, isn't it?

[voice]

Doubt they simply Knock a few up, gonna take time and some hard to find components, bet they're hoping China is forthcoming

[flatandy]

Building the airframe is probably the easy part, yeah. Buying half a billion quids worth of surveillance equipment is a bit of a bigger deal.

And we know that the Russians do not produce their top-of-the-range equipment very fast. A reminder that the SU-57, scheduled to begin service in the 90s, has so far had 22 planes delivered. Or the SU-75, which has zero planes so far. Or the T-14 tank of which there were meant to be 2500 by 2020 and there might be zero. I wonder how fast they'll replace all the boats that have had "accidents".

[perrykneeham]

I suspect the spokesman's just grifting, but what he suggests provides some insight and hope.

They're proposing to re-start the manufacture of some awful, inadequate, obsolete Soviet cack. To what end? It'll still have inadequate sensor range, piss-poor loiter times and will still be shot out of the sky.

But it looks like they have no choice. Nobody will sell them a suitable aircraft, nor can they get the components to make powerful and light electronics. So they're stuck with old lorries and b&W TVs with valves.

[mids]

Germany.

"Germany accidentally leaked British military secrets to Russia by using off-the-shelf video phone technology to discuss missiles in Ukraine.

The head of the Luftwaffe told air force officers and a general who dialled in from his hotel room how British and French officials were delivering Storm Shadows to Ukrainian soldiers.

He also said British troops were “on the ground”, a highly sensitive detail that has already caused division and infighting among Nato allies."

www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/03/germany-intelligence-leak-uk-troops-ground-ukraine-nato/

[flatandy]

What on earth are British military secrets?

That we have a boat that's actually seaworthy?

Someone wasn't drunk in Aldershot on a Saturday night?

[mids]

Leaky lederhosen. Leuky.

[flatandy]

That's a bizarre thing to be a British military secret. I guess it's the army rather than air force that wear lederhosen?

[mids]

Sweden's in Nato now.

[perrykneeham]

Is war looming? It does seem like our neighbours in northern Europe are getting their houses in order.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68557038.amp

I see that we're thinking about upping our defence spen to 3% of GDP.

Troubling times. I would be very worried if I had sons of military age (well, I do, but he's probably too old-ish now and unlikely to be front-line material).

[mids]

I see this but always think that Russia are barely holding their own against Ukraine, they'd have no chance even if it was just Finland that joined in against them. Then again maybe Putin is that irrational.

[perrykneeham]

Maybe the worry is that he will go full kamikaze in the short term, but also he will use the current situation to build up the men and equipment needed to be a problem. Russia, in itself, isn't a big deal, but if there are multiple conflicts going on (and a lunatic in the Whitehouse) we might find that we'll be carrying much of the load.

You could model a scenario where China, Korea, Iran etc all kicked off. I wouldn't trust much of Africa to back us.

[mids]

The nightmare scenario, I suppose. Of course we, and Europe, should have been doing a lot more of the heavy lifting all along. I don't imagine that will or can be sorted particularly quickly.

[perrykneeham]

Yeah, I think German appeasement has been a real problem. Now we're playing catch up.

[perrykneeham]

Interesting .... "The Czechs found, for Ukraine, nearly a million shells precisely when Ukraine needed those million shells the most: at the peak of Russia’s winter offensive. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Czech artillery initiative probably saved entire Ukrainian cities, by giving the Ukrainian army the firepower to resist a much bigger Russian army.

It’s no secret how Ukraine got into an artillery bind late last year. In early 2023, according to The Washington Post, the United States quietly brokered a deal with South Korea – a country with sprawling artillery factories – to purchase, likely for billions of dollars, a whopping one million shells in the standard Nato 155mm calibre, now also the standard artillery round of Ukraine.

Those million shells, heaped on top of ammunition Ukraine was getting directly from the USA and European countries, freed Ukraine’s 3,000 or so howitzers to blast away at a rate of at least 10,000 rounds a day – matching, for the first time, the daily firing rate of Russia’s 6,000 howitzers."