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Drones, GPS and guided/semi guided munitions (anti armour and anti personnel) has returned Artillery to the king of battle
I think lack of either side having air-superiority has led to the return of tanks and arty being the king of battle. It's sort of grimly fascinating watching what amounts to a WW1 era war happing in the 21st C.
British Army uses the Python mounted to the Trojan AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer). Based on the challenger platfrom, also equipped with mine plough, towing equipment and facines for breaching trenches and gap onbstacles.
Ukraine does have something similar but not in the numbers required. The Engineers will locate a detachement to an Armoured Regiment to support offensive operations.
My old man was an Armoured Engineer back in the day and operated both the AVRE and the AVLB, grew up around that kit on tank parks in Germany.
Armchair general, why would you try to capture tokmak with that level of defense? As a logistics hub wouldn’t it just be better to get artillery in range and anytime something moves in it, flatten it? Destroy any rail or roads? Go around and find a softer target. They must be looking to pull in reserves and then hit somewhere else?
It does look like they want tokmak, then melitopol and the river estuary effectivly cutting the russians in half with Crimea on one side and the rest on the other.
Because they think they're Himars'd it to the point where they can do it and mud season beckons so they're in a hurry.
Or they know something we don't, which let's face it, is highly likely.
Armchair general, why would you try to capture tokmak with that level of defense? As a logistics hub wouldn’t it just be better to get artillery in range and anytime something moves in it, flatten it? Destroy any rail or roads? Go around and find a softer target. They must be looking to pull in reserves and then hit somewhere else?
As one armchair general to another I'd guess that it's about speed. You'll access metalled roads direct to Melitopol and Berdyans'k and paved roads are more difficult to mine. You also get the rail infrastructure, station, junctions, etc, and not just the rails
Your vehicles will be more fuel efficient on-road too
It's a tremendous filip for your troops and a blow to Russia
To go around you'll find minefields that might be a couple of miles deep and at least three river/marshy areas to cross going south, have a look on google maps
Or it might be something else entirely ^^
The St Petersburg Russia-Africa summit doesn't seem to have gone to plan.
45 heads of African countries came in 2019, but of the 49 invited this year only 17 turned up. According to the UN Russia has donated less to the U.N. World Food Programme than the UK (US$6.5mn v US$124mn). It seems that their national balance sheet isn't so rosy and one of their demands before stopping the grain deal was access to the SWIFT banking system https://www.wfp.org/funding/2023
Stopping the UN Grain Deal, destroying Ukrainian grain stocks and ports along with other actions in Ukraine have led to inflation due to both grain and fuel costs in countries that can least afford it
Yevgeny Prigozhin was also in St Petersburg selling Wagner's services and it seems that he's very important to Russian projection abroad, especially as other countries would move in given a chance. Seven African countries have staged a coup in the last three years and Niger is the latest example. It's also the 7th largest producer of uranium and its recent coup will concern French nuclear power operators as one example
More detail from the summit here https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-tells-african-leaders-moscow-is-studying-their-ukraine-proposal-2023-07-28/
M982 Excalibur, is brutal!
we are really seeing a shift how modern warfare is fought in real time! if you're in a vehicle (of consequence) and seen you're dead !
I see Medvedev is threatening nuclear weapons again if Ukraine takes a bite from Russia. But does he mean Russia borders pre-declaration of annexation or post? What about crimea?
Not that I'm worried or anything.....
Another day another threat of nuclear war from Medvedev. When he talks about Russia he's including the regions of Ukraine that 'voted' to join Russia
Offs lost count of how many times they've threatened nuclear war now.
What is a concern is that they absolutely would allow/make happen a nuclear power station go bang of pushed into a corner.
Firing nukes though? Nah.
I think it depends on how much vodka Medvedev has had that day.
Politico, quoting Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Dmitry Medvedev https://www.politico.eu/article/stop-drunk-post-social-media-ukraine-russia-dmitry-medvedev-dmytro-kuleba/
The Chonhar railway bridge was badly damaged on the 29th. It connects the occupied Kherson region with Crimea and doesn't seem to have been picked up by western news agencies
"Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo claimed Ukrainian forces launched 12 Storm Shadow missiles at the Chonhar rail bridge, but claimed that Russian air defenses intercepted all 12 missiles."
"Russian milbloggers maintained their silence on damage to the Chonhar Bridge on July 31, possibly supporting ISW’s previous assessment that the Kremlin may have directed Russian commentators to refrain from covering the strike in an effort to exert greater control of the information space"
Both quotes from https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
Damage to the Chonhar road bridge was widely reported on 22nd June, which demonstrates the change
It's difficult to tell how serious the damage to the bridge is just from this picture. If it has only damaged the deck, it might be operational again within days. If it has caused structural damage, it may be closed permanently.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1685395215027167232
Anyone found out what is in that moscow skyscraper thats been hit by drones twice now. Seems a little coincidental of all the tower blocks for that one to be hit twice
@DT78, Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media section (i.e. propaganda) according to Twitter
just seen beeb has updated and saying its ministry of economic development. I think ministry of propaganda and hacking is more likely.... shows how weak the russian defences are if they can target the same building twice in two days. I presume these drones can't be flying 400+ miles into russia and must be somewhere relatively close, if not they've sailed across a massive chunk of the country without being intercepted
Also can't believe Ru claims these are terriorist attacks when does exactly the same thing to Ukr nightly, only 100 times more missles and drones.
DT78Free Member
just seen beeb has updated and saying its ministry of economic development. I think ministry of propaganda and hacking is more likely…. shows how weak the russian defences are if they can target the same building twice in two days. I presume these drones can’t be flying 400+ miles into russia and must be somewhere relatively close, if not they’ve sailed across a massive chunk of the country without being intercepted
Also can’t believe Ru claims these are terriorist attacks when does exactly the same thing to Ukr nightly, only 100 times more missles and drones.
History shows us that this is often the case. (Simplification of reality alert!) Britain attempts to take over Ireland, ends up controlling a part of it which it proceeds to anglicise. Locals and cross border forces try to fight back to retake their homeland from the imperial invaders including attacks on the mainland. Get called terrorists and label sticks. The IRA will always be terrorists in the minds of most of the British population. Is it really that different today?
can’t believe Ru claims...
There might have been a few clues over the last couple of years that Russia just makes up whatever nonsense suits its purposes.
I presume these drones can’t be flying 400+ miles into russia
The Ukrainians appear to be using large numbers of low flying, slow, cheap piston engined drones. I can imagine that they're hard to spot with radars that are optimised for fast jets and missiles. They'll be in the ground clutter and slow speed may even mean they're filtered out - you don't want your air defence radar being triggered by speeding trucks and cars.
The IRA will always be terrorists in the minds of most of the British population
I alluded to the many similarities at the very start of this thread.
one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.
Don’t forget Ru are making these claims for its home audience.
Russia can claim Unicorns, Santa, Faeries and Lavrov is a beacon of peace and love but the reality may be different.
Those drones must still be quite sophisticated to be able to hit the same building, especially when surrounded by other tower blocks
Surely there are spotters for this sort of thing if radar isn't effective? If they aren't fast, and low they should be easy to be seen? Or are they fast enough to cover 400 miles overnight?
Honestly surprised ukraine can pull it off, I'd assume they had a team operating (relatively) close by to hit twice in as many days. Little damage done, but it seems more of a, we can hit you, if we want to, type attack rather than one that causes devastation.
Not sure I fully agree with the IRA point, I see where you are going with it, but its not the same in my opinion. Maybe that one needs another thread than derail this one....
One of the drone types that Ukraine has used previously is the UJ22 - published range is 800km autonomous flight, cruise speed 120km. Kiev to Moscow is 870km, optimising the drone for range sounds easier to me than smuggling lots of UAVs into Russia.
Hitting the same building twice is quite a feat. I wonder if they have spotters for terminal guidance - or perhaps someone's doing something clever with hijacked security cameras or using cell tower triangulation? I'd have assumed that GPS and Glosnass are being degraded by the Russians in Moscow but perhaps they're only doing so around The Kremlin. If GPS is available you get 5m accuracy without a lot of effort, sufficient to hit a building.
I’d have assumed that GPS and Glosnass are being degraded by the Russians in Moscow
You can see GPS interference in action here and look back in time as well... https://gpsjam.org/
Belarusian helicopters very deliberately overflying Poland yesterday. What are they trying to achieve?
Yeah it's a bit odd, destabilising the border to annoy and distract NATO is one thing but it's really not in anyone's interests to actually kick something off there. I'm surprised Poland and Lithuania haven't temporarily closed their borders with Belarus
I thought Poland had a while ago? Edit - just to freight vehicles.
Yeah it’s a bit odd, destabilising the border to annoy and distract NATO is one thing but it’s really not in anyone’s interests to actually kick something off there.
I think it plays to the Russian population about 'look how brave and strong mother Russia is'. If it does kick off, it gives old pooty-baby a reason to cry off Ukraine because Russia 'has' to go fight big bad Nato and they can present it positively to the population.
Off course because of lack of GPS accuracy?
Maybe. To me it looks like a very deliberate excursion to somewhere they know they're likely to be seen (by someone with a mobile phone to take a picture) but I suppose they could have been flying along, looked out of the window and realised where they were before clearing off. We can never rule out incompetence, I suppose.
Looks like the Ukrainians managed to biff another Black Sea fleet vessel with a naval drone.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1687376829143822336
https://twitter.com/BDeMayo/status/1687366564146757632
Ukrainians are devious sods and long may it last!👍
Putin wakes to more bad news!
July 12: Northern Fleet landing ship is ready to start shuttle tourists from Crimea
August 4: Northern Fleet ship seriously damaged in drone attack
Wonder what effect all the worry about the bridge security, water supply from the empty reservoir and now that is having on Russian civilian repatriation from Crimea?
wouldn't gloat too much, shit like this makes hms elizabeth and hms prince of wales £8 billion (not including all those f35 that would go down with them and support costs) a complete waste of money. Vulnerable to a few grands worth of consumer electronics. They were already a waste of money (and pretty shit) before (due to the fact we can't afford a proper carrier battle group, missile cruisers, gazillion destroyers, 24/7 awacs etc and no catapults ) now just looks like folly.
wouldn’t gloat too much, shit like this makes hms elizabeth and hms prince of wales £8 billion (not including all those f35 that would go down with them and support costs) a complete waste of money. Vulnerable to a few grands worth of consumer electronics. They were already a waste of money (and pretty shit) before (due to the fact we can’t afford a proper carrier battle group, missile cruisers, gazillion destroyers, 24/7 awacs etc and no catapults ) now just looks like folly.
Im pretty sure militaries across the wrold , including ours, are watching with interest and working on countermeasures
Vulnerable to a few grands worth of consumer electronics.
This war will concentrate the minds of many in our procurement and tactical arenas
Thanks to a photographer managing to land a drone on HMS QE at Invergordon in 2017 they are now relatively well-protected, although 4x 30mm gun mounts were left out, but may be fitted in the future.
Apart from this the carrier group has helicopter protection with Martlet missiles as an outer cordon and the carriers have 3x radar-controlled 20mm cannons with about a mile targetted range and 3-mile less accurate range, 6x smaller machine guns and electronic protection. The guns will protect against air and sea threats, the Martlets are the marine version, rather than the SAM version
The carrier group will augment the shipborne guns
oooh all that nice new tech sitting at the bottom of the ocean, at least BAE systems shareholders will be happy. Iran are going hit you with a 1000 aerial drones, 1000 surface drones and 1000 submerged drones and CWIZ reload cost $60,0000. My guess if you can't afford to lose it you won't deploy it :/
CWIZ reload cost $60,0000
Each Phalanx or per ship? Cheap either way if they work as advertised 🙂
quite interesting that there was a lot of talk from the MOD about giving up the tank altogether.... then that was pooh-poohed perhaps they garnered something from their own analysis before even this kicked off.
each gun, it worked out about $60k per mortar shell to protect the green zone in Baghdad