Ukraine

This guy has a popular Youtube channel exploring Russia and former USSR territories. He’s just left Kyiv.

The US won’t be handing over control of those UCAV’s to anyone. They’re assets they don’t relinquish control of.

If the US offers them attack drones, are they handed over to Ukraine, or are they still piloted from Las Vegas

First the Germans reverse decades of arms policy – now the Swiss agree to impose all EU sanctions…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60542877?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=621cdc82ec502b53cd480232%26Switzerland%20to%20adopt%20EU%20sanctions%20against%20Russia%262022-02-28T14%3A36%3A19.184Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:c737d452-e55f-4529-95b5-33521d57e998&pinned_post_asset_id=621cdc82ec502b53cd480232&pinned_post_type=share

I’ve just read that Ukraine is releasing prisoners with military experience to go and fight in the ‘hot spots.’

I also read that Putin is shipping in some of his Wagner mercenaries from Africa, presumably to pick up where the Chechens signed out.

I’m sure Ukraine is getting its hands on a lot of shared intelligence and I wonder if they are tracking flights from Africa right now in order to arrange a rendezvous between the two groups?

The drones are Turkish I believe, flown by Ukrainians, and I think I read that they are a Russian design!

Also Switzerland has just rolled and implemented sanctions. They didn’t even do that with Hitler.

@timbog160 Aye, purchased a while back. The Ukrainians sent a load of their personnel to Turkey for training, some phots knocking around the web.

TB2

The drones the Ukrainians are using are Turkish designed and mainly Turkish manufactured there may have been some British and Canadian components

Been a lot of talk about how good these TB2 drones are. I just saw this:

The TB2 is marking up a fairly impressive record against Russian BUKs https://t.co/oFF4cLnIqx

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) February 28, 2022

Here’s the wiki page for the drones. But…. what makes them so good? They don’t go fast, they don’t go high, and they have a range that would be openly scorned in the electric car thread. Is it that they are small on radar? Quick to launch and land?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baykar_Bayraktar_TB2#Performance

I did jokingly wonder if the US could round up a few Ukrainians in the States, give them a crash course in Drone piloting, then after a bit of paintwork on those Predators get them to work out in Ukraine. In a way doesn’t seem much different to giving a Ukrainian a Javelin but I get why it’s not going to happen.

The world might have moved on but there doesn’t seem to have been anything developed that can replace an A10.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

They are clumbersome and therefore vulnerable against modern anti aircraft shoulder mounted rockets etc. I’d assume a modern attack helicopter has pretty much replaced them, but I’m no expert.

It begs the question for me, the US, EU and seemingly every nation west of them are offering ‘Lethal Aid’ at what point does that become joining in?

It seems the current rules of engagement mean ‘we’ can supply equipment and weapons, which would include jet fighters, but no personell.

There’s been a few comments about control of the Air War. Similar phrases mean very different things. Air Superiority/Air Supremacy.
Air Superiority- you are winning the skies, but it’s still a battle.
Air Supremacy- you can operate with impunity.

Also under consideration is who controls the ground you are flying over?
Supporting your front line Ops from within territory you control is very different from going into the Russian controlled areas to hit their deep supply lines. Then you are in range of the mobile Anti A/c batteries.

The A10 replacement/retirement just keeps getting pushed back.

They have been designed for another era’s battlefield but this seems to be how Russia are approaching it.

Cheap, Heavy, Strong. Pick Three. 😉

I also read that Putin is shipping in some of his Wagner mercenaries

I’m pretty sure I read some information over the weekend that said that Wagner mercenaries were amongst some of the troops that were hardest hit in the opening days of the conflict suffering quite extensive losses.

They are clumbersome and therefore vulnerable

It’s well worth bearing in mind in these days of misinformation. The USAF would dearly love to get rid of the A10. It takes up great big bits of budget that they’d much rather spend on other – much more fun and exciting things. They consider the CAS role something that the army ought to spend money on, not them, so they’re always telling everyone who’ll listen just how rubbish it is…

Right, shall we put one bit of bollocks to bed; the A10 is not slow and lumbering. It may be in relation to other modern fixed wing aircraft that could be used for ground attack, but it is still faster than most modern rotary platforms.

Has a payload of more than the gun too. I know google is great, but there’s a lot of bollocks out there. There’s a reason the USAF extended its life.

Yes, it is a one trick pony; CAS, but it does it with pretty devastating effect.

Somewhere like Ukraine were the Russians seem to have a thing for closely grouped, linear direction of travel on marked roads, it would be savage.

Strange how everything coming out of social media shows Russian losses with the Ukrainians apparently not losing a single man or vehicle?!

Also Switzerland has just rolled and implemented sanctions. They didn’t even do that with Hitler.

Hitler and most of his top brass were ploughing money and gold into Switzerland during the war and the Swiss grew very rich because of it, they banked on the Nazis winning and the Nazis saw Switzerland as Germanic enough they didn’t need to be invaded. It was perhaps a happy accident for them that when the Nazi’s lost, the Swiss realised that the Nazi brass has been so clever at hiding the loot they stole, no one would come looking for it when they were all dead.

Apparently Dodgy Rich Russians prefer London and other UK Tax Havens to hide their money, but Oligarchs aren’t as closely tied to Russian politics as the Hazis were?

It begs the question for me, the US, EU and seemingly every nation west of them are offering ‘Lethal Aid’ at what point does that become joining in?

It seems the current rules of engagement mean ‘we’ can supply equipment and weapons, which would include jet fighters, but no personell.

We aren’t the ones pulling the trigger on the lethal equipment so we aren’t involved, but there is a good chance Putin will use it as proof of aggression by us. I couldn’t find any international law or treaty that forbids supplying arms to countries at war and i really doubt we would do it if it did as it would massively undermine our position.

killing russian armour in europe was what it (the A10) was built for.

@Klunk, exactly. Although it was good in certain situations in Afghanistan when you needed effect. A precision system was better though.

Maybe Ukraine is where the USAF could sell them when they finally shelve them?

Cheap, Heavy, Strong. Pick Three.

You forgot noisy and slow, you can hear them comming from ten miles away, they would need chopper or drone support really, or they’d just get shot out of the sky. A10 are pretty much redundant in modern warfare, depsite how cool they are.

Compare that to a more agile attack helicopter or the smaller, quiter, harder to hit drone.

Strange how everything coming out of social media shows Russian losses with the Ukrainians apparently not losing a single man or vehicle?!

maybe you need to have a look at your choice and range  of social media feeds, cause honestly  that’s not my view

There’s a reason the USAF extended its life.

Because congress made them do it, not because they wanted to. The senior leadership want to scrap them and replace them with F35, not keep maintaining the far cheaper (in dolars per hour of flight time) airframe.

But yes, there’s a reason they are loved, because they can car lots, stay in the air for a long time and can fly slow and close to support ground troops. In Afghanistan they were _the_ thing to be supported by if you got into trouble. Well, that and the Apaches.

So they don’t have DAS? 300 knots is still faster than rotary. Jesus, stop googling crap man.

You forgot noisy and slow, you can hear them comming from ten miles away, they would need chopper or drone support really, or they’d just get shot out of the sky. A10 are pretty much redundant in modern warfare, depsite how cool they are.

Compare that to a more agile attack helicopter or the smaller, quiter, harder to hit drone :
Length: 6.5 m (21 ft)
Wing span: 12 m (39 ft):

Strange how everything coming out of social media shows Russian losses with the Ukrainians apparently not losing a single man or vehicle?!

That’s obviously not the case but I think anything pro-Ukraine is going to celebrate destroyed Russian Tanks etc, and downplay Ukrainian losses.

I also read that some Russian soldiers had mobile phones taken from them by superiors, so perhaps the ability to film what is going on is limited to one side.

Ukraine seem to have access to Drones, there was a video on Sky News of them destroying a Russian Missile battery with one.

They’ve had drones for a while as I understand it… Mostly bought off Turkey, who in turn bought them off Russia! 😂

It begs the question for me, the US, EU and seemingly every nation west of them are offering ‘Lethal Aid’ at what point does that become joining in? If the US offers them attack drones, are they handed over to Ukraine, or are they still piloted from Las Vegas?

It’s a fine line, and a worthwhile question for sure… Fortunately for Ukraine, the only person in the world right now for whom the answer to that question matters is Vladimir Putin, and Putin may have made some gross miscalculations about this war so far, but he’s not stupid. If NATO enters this war, it will be bad for all the nations involved, but it will be MUCH worse for Russia!

The thing that worries me is that frustration may see the RF army deploy a low-yield nuke to erase large swathes of the Ukrainian resistance. Even if it is 0.5 kt, the fact that fissile materials caused an explosion could be enough to trigger a nuclear response. Or would NATO ignore a tidgy nuke?

If we’re talking about cluster bombs and Thermobaric weapons contravening the Geneva Convention, then I’m pretty sure an unprovoked Nuclear attack on a UN/NATO/EU ally (even if not a member state) would warrant a retaliation… Would the US send a Nuke into Moscow immediately afterwards? No, probably not, not immediately. Would the combined forces of the rest of the world immediately bomb the shit out of the entire Russian military, regardless of which soil they were on, whilst special forces were sent in to storm the Kremlin… You better believe it!

Though it also depends where it was sent… If they dropped a tiny one on Pripyat, to kind of prove a point that they’re ready to do it but on a “carefully selected target that caused minimal extra casualties”, or if it was downtown Kyiv…

The A10 replacement/retirement just keeps getting pushed back.

Because it would be about as much use as a chocolate teapot in modern wargames… A drone is so much more effective, and so are personal anti-tank weapons now.

It’s well worth bearing in mind in these days of misinformation. The USAF would dearly love to get rid of the A10. It takes up great big bits of budget that they’d much rather spend on other – much more fun and exciting things. They consider the CAS role something that the army ought to spend money on, not them, so they’re always telling everyone who’ll listen just how rubbish it is…

For this reason… The A10 wasn’t rubbish, it was of its time. That time isn’t now. Remember how amazed you were when the first Pentium processors came out in the mid 90’s, how they revolutionised personal computers. Well the Warthogs had already been out of production for 10yrs by this point!

They are from a bygone era, when anti aircraft missiles were few and far between, and the most effective way of taking out tanks was mounting a gatling gun in a plane and shooting them full of depleted uranium rounds from the sky.

Well, I’ve spend 15 mins reading about A10 Warhogs and ‘near-peer’ warfare so obviously I’m an expert now.

Supposedly when it comes to close combat against ground forces, they’re still near unbeatable. Obviously the faster flying, near-stealth current gen fighters are much harder to attack most of the time, but when it comes down to the actual business of attacking tanks they have to slow down to the point when they can be fired at by IR guided shoulder fired weapons which aren’t effected by stealth technology, the A10 has an IR signature about half that of an F22 for example.

Those saying it’s a role for Apaches, of course it is, but they have some of the same downsides as the A10s, they’re slow and noisy, but even as impressively armoured as they are, they’re not as survivable as the A10s. They can of course (because I’m an expert now) sit behind a hill and fire Hellfires all day, but then it’s not a close combat attack.

It’s all a moot point of course, only the US has A10s and if this ever becomes a War between the US / NATO and Russia, it won’t be fought by bombing or shooting up columns of Russian trucks and tanks.

killing russian armour in europe was what it (the A10) was built for.

In the 1970’s… 🤦🏻

The SR-71 Blackbird was built for reconnaissance of Soviet targets only a handful of years earlier… Are you suggesting we bring them out of retirement at great cost so they can go and take a few photos at Mach 3 above Russia? 🤷🏻‍♂️

The IOC has banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competitions. Considering their form with toadying to the Russians (including during the latest Winter Olympics) quite refreshing to see

Not sure FIFA will (ever) do the same…

BBC – IOC bans Russia & Belarus

the A10 has an IR signature about half that of an F22 for example.

As long as you are warmer than the background the IR system is seeing you. Heat signatures don’t just mean exhaust plumes

@P-Jay some sense finally. That’s high quality armchair QB-ing there, a high standard to follow.

Flying an A10 or AH of any description about in contested airspace would not be at the top of my list of fun times. Especially when all the the other airframes looking to kill you are bloody quick.

And that’s the thing, even for the AH fanboys, most CAS in the last 20 years has been conducted in completely uncontested airspace.

UN special session live now

FIFA have caved

Well blow me, looks like FIFA is set to do the same!

BBC – FIFA set to suspend Russia

So they don’t have DAS? 300 knots is still faster than rotary. Jesus, stop googling crap man.

Whatever, they are less agile than a modern helicopter, and a much louder target than a drone. Why would you deploy an A10 if you had the latter two options?

Yes there are circumstances when A10s may be fine, mostly if you are fighting against a 3rd world country.

In the 1970’s…

same as the Apache.

Well done guys, having a fight over who’s correct about the continuing relevance of the A10 is definitely an appropriate and mature response to current events. 🤦

At some point you have to wonder if the Russian public don’t wonder if there is something fishy about the narrative they’ve been sold?

I played this when I was about 10, AMA ;)

They are from a bygone era, when anti aircraft missiles were few and far between, and the most effective way of taking out tanks was mounting a gatling gun in a plane and shooting them full of depleted uranium rounds from the sky.

That’s not the weapon the A10 use against tanks, they use two variants of the Maverick (E/O and IR). The A10 is designed to be used under an air supremacy model, i.e. when you have complete control of the airspace so they can stooge around under FAC looking for targets.  They’re an effective weapon, it’s just that the USAF would like that role to be done by the army from their budget, not from the USAF budget. Hence the reason they’re constantly trying to rid themselves of them, and the propaganda about how ineffectual they are.

Well done guys, having a fight over who’s correct about the continuing relevance of the A10 is definitely an appropriate and mature response to current events.

Hey no one is fighting here, just debating, which is pretty natural considering the circumstances. It’s only natural to consider, is it not?