Ukraine vs Russia III

Turtle tank gets vaporized.

Russian turtle tank with a mine trawl neutralises a mine, then mine neutralizes a turtle tank. pic.twitter.com/jRaWmI0lTO

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 30, 2024

 

Blue sky, yellow sun. Must be Ukraine.

 

Wall Street Journal is reporting that the US will equip Ukraine's F16s that can use the US's most advanced weapons like the AIM-120 AMRAAM. Which variant is likely really important as the "standard" version has a range up to 120km while the ER version has a range up to 180km. With Russian glide bombs having a 40km range, this puts Russian fighter/bombers well within the range of the missiles. Not only that, but the targeting of the missiles can be acquired via other planes. As an example, if Ukraine had an AWAC airplane (no idea if they do), it could identify Russian fighter/bombers from over Kyiv, well outside of Russia's anti-air missile ranges, while a F16 flying low to the ground fires an AMRAAM or two targeting the Russian aircraft. With this technique, the first warning the Russian aircraft would have that a missile is flying their way is when it explodes near their cockpit.

https://www.wsj.com/world/u-s-to-arm-ukraines-f-16-jets-with-advanced-weapons-71d81e20

 

Sweden has pledged two Saab 340 AEW&C planes , however I don't know what is the timeline on delivering that.

An article about that here.

 

Ukraine already has lots of AMRAAM missiles because it's used in the NASAMS anti-aircraft system.

All of this is very tricky because intercept ranges vary widely depending on a lot of things, like if the targeted aircraft is flying towards or away, or at what altitude you launch.

 

They aren’t interchangeable. The AMRAAMs for NASAM have been modified to be used surface-to-air. They could, of course, be modified back to air-to-air, but you can’t hotswap out of a NASAM launcher and put it on an F16. We also don’t know what variant has been provided to Ukraine for NASAM vs variant provided for F16s.

Not as much as you may think. Yes, in order for the to get the full 180km it needs to be high altitude, but even at low altitude launch, it’s still significantly longer than a 40km range glide bomb.

Russian glide bombs are dropped from over Russian controlled territory, as you’ve previously noted, and Ukrainian F16s aren’t going to leave Ukrainian controlled territory. So any intercepts are going to be head-on vs low and slow targets that are heavily laden with glide bombs. They also don’t even need to hit. Any Russian aircraft that gets an active ping from an AMRAAM is going to drop its bombs immediately so it can at least get some maneuverability..

 

Ukrainian air force did not have AWAC planes prior to Russian invasion. Swedish AWAC planes are now a part of Ukrainian air forces but I do not know if they had been delivered yet.

 

So much wasted explosives

Unless they hit their own positions

 

From Thomas Theiner, former artillery and then staff colonel in the Alpini regiment

If @AlbertoNardelli writes F-16 are now in Ukraine, then we can be sure that F-16 are now in fact in Ukraine.

F-16 in Ukraine!https://t.co/mBrDSwmPQO

— Thomas C. Theiner (@noclador) July 31, 2024

Nardelli works for Bloomberg. If he says it and Blommberg publishes it, then it's almost certainly true

 

For some reason your post made me realize my that USA could easily have given the A6-Prowler to Ukraine. It was recently retired so they will work

I googled and except an articles in WSJ saying just that Ukraine could use it.

But it is weird because it would help a lot that Ukraine never asked/insisted?

 

There aren't that many and the airframes are really, really old. Obviously Ukraine could use them, but production ran from 1966 to 1991.

 

So I searched

Apparently they were retired 2019 and in normal conditions something retired in 2019 would be easier to bring the Prowlers were in a sad state and in 2019 only 4 were functional

Too bad honestly as it would have helped immensely

 

With Russia increasingly relying upon drones to attack Ukrainian positions and vehicles as well, they've been ramping up production as quickly as possible. One way they've been doing that is to have as many manufacturers/assemblers to start making them as possible. One of these manufacturers is Sudoplatov, which initially sent all of its drones set to the same frequency. Ukraine figured this out and jammed the frequency. Well, Russia decided this was such a great idea that they have now treed up all of the other drone manufacturers/assemblers under Sudoplatov.

This, of course, is not always a bad idea as it could allow for Russia to maximize coordination between the companies, but given Sudoplatov's issues with drone production, it has caused Russian milbloggers to complain.

Military correspondent Romanov complains about the monopolization of the production of Russian FPV drones by the Sudoplatov company, which previously distinguished itself by supplying drones to the front with the same frequency, which the Ukrainians figured out and were able to… pic.twitter.com/ts2M4uEx9Y

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) August 1, 2024

 

I haven't seen any mention of who was sent back to Russia in today's prisoner exchange (probably because they are Russian spies), but as mentioned above by yasik, there was a prisoner exchange between the West and Russia.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...-the-release-of-americans-detained-in-russia/

Perhaps the most amusing reaction is the Igor Girkin's wife complaining that her husband was not one of the prisoners that the West negotiated the release of.. I'm not sure what she's thinking here as Igor has been convicted in the Netherlands for the murder of the crew and passengers on MH17 and sentenced to life in prison. Obviously, conditions in Dutch prisons is significantly better than conditions in Russian prisons, so there's that?

For some reason, Igor Strelkov’s wife Miroslava Reginskaya complains about the exchange of “liberal prisoners” while her "hero" husband is in prison. Her message is not entirely clear. Does she want Strelkov to be sent to the West, for example, to the Netherlands? pic.twitter.com/JdHSiZEuYe

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) August 1, 2024

 

I don't read Russian. Granted, I also wouldn't know what they did to get arrested.

I did see that one of the released was a man that killed a Chechen rebel leader in Germany.

 

Ukraine attacked a Russian base in Syria, destroying an anti-drone system and several other military equipment.

It keeps getting better - HUR struck a Russian base in Syria: "The target of the attack was Russian military equipment at the Kuweires airbase, which is located east of Aleppo and occupied by Russian forces."

Kyiv Post states: "The released videos purport to show key moments of… pic.twitter.com/k9rd3SmABQ

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) July 31, 2024

 

Awwww. Poor guy. All locked up in prison while opposition activists are released.

MH17 killer Igor Girkin/Strelkov is angry about being left out of the prisoner exchange. "I realised again that in Russia it's much more convenient and safer to be a Russophobe and a bastard." His wife complained that "traitors" are being released while a "patriot" is in prison.

— XSovietNews 🇺🇦 (@XSovietNews) August 1, 2024

 

All of the people imprisoned in Russia are innocents while those in the West are guilty. Do I have that right?

 

Speaking of which! Former Defense Minister Shoigyu can’t be liking life right now. Pretty much his entire inner circle has been removed from their positions and some of them have been arrested.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1819118687498260548.html

 

Putin has doubled the signing bonus for new recruits (which is supposed to be at least doubled again by the region and sometimes added onto by the city, so it varies by region and in some places (like Moscow) can get really big). They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't need to as costs for signing bonuses and death/injury payments is now at a insane level (if they actually paid them all out, which they don't).

But there was an interesting point from the latest Vlad Vexler video - high signing bonuses are a way of mollifying the population because they don't see recruits as lives wasted in a needless war, but as gamblers hoping for a life-changing payout if they survive their tour.