LightDreams wrote:
Some more news is filtering out in the aftermath of the Wagner "mutiny"...

- Apparently, Russia lost more aircraft in one day, courtesy of the Wagner forces, than they have on any other day of the Ukrainian war.   Reportedly 6 helicopters and 1 large Aerial Command Point Plane (there's also video of a fuel depot being blown up).

Supposedly the Wagner group had Russian missiles that the Russian Military weren't aware of (there are questions as to how they obtained those).  So when the Russians attacked the Wagner group's advancing forces (primarily with military helicopters, coordinated by an Aerial Command plane with senior generals onboard), the Wagner group took them out.  Which must have been quite a shock for Moscow.

- It's being claimed that Prigozhin actually got his key demand for the removal of the two Russian Defense heads, Shoigu and Gerasimov.  They haven't been seen, or quoted, in public since the "stand down" of the mutiny.  The claim is that, to save face, Putin won't make an announcement for 2 months about them being replaced.  We'll have to see if that turns out to be true or not.

Still lots of questions to be answered.  The only clear outcome is that Putin's power has been "weakened", to some degree.  It's also a reasonable guess that Russian military morale, especially on the frontlines, will also have taken a hit.




[EDITED TO ADD...]

Former CIA director and retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus suggested that Prigozhin "should be very careful around open windows in his new surroundings in Belarus..."

Yes, a surprising number of key Russians somehow manage to keep falling out of them.  And a number of them, remarkably, manage to do so even from their hospital beds.

That suggests complete incompetence on the part of the Russian defense ministry, if they didn't even know what weapons they'd given the Wagners. But given the scale of corruption and graft in Russia it's not surprising.

Gold Rush Studio wrote:
The issue of Black Sea dolphins dying in the war got my attention and I easily found this on a Google search that took me all of about ten seconds. Not sure why anyone else could not manage this same result. Odd.

https://www.newsweek.com/dolphins-black … ar-1792786

(Excerpt: Go to the link for the full article)

Russia-Ukraine War Pushing Dolphins to Extinction in Black Sea

BY ARISTOS GEORGIOU ON 4/5/23 AT 1:44 PM EDT

"The war in Ukraine has led to a dramatic increase in the deaths of dolphins and porpoises due to military operations in the Black Sea, a "heartbreaking" study has found.

The study, which was published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, has shown that tens of thousands of cetaceans have died in the region—a marginal sea of the Mediterranean, enclosed by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine.

As a result, the lead author of the study has warned that these animals could be wiped out in the region.

War has always resulted in millions of silent, non-human victims. But the scale of this suffering is often difficult to quantify and typically overshadowed by the human tragedy. The latest study is a stark demonstration that humans are not the only victims of the ongoing conflict."

It is tragic in a way. Underwater explosions and sonar appear to be the major killers of marine mammals in the Black Sea.

JSouthworth wrote:
And they show that the complex arrangements for control of drones or UCAVs from other aircraft, which NATO air forces seem to consider essential for some obscure reason, are in fact completely unnecessary as well as being completely impracticable.

"for some obscure reason"

" completely unnecessary"

"completely impracticable"

PRICELESS. 😂😂😂😂

""the Moscow air defense system, usually considered the most formidable of any city in the world".

Second only to the "usually considered" invincible Russian Army.

CLUELESS. 😂😂😂😂

"“Russia has long given a very high priority to maintaining advanced ground-based air defences, but it is increasingly clear that it is struggling to counter air threats deep inside Russia,” the UK defence ministry wrote last year, a day after the explosions at Russia’s Engels airbase."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ … w-rooftops

JSouthworth wrote:
. In one sense at least a helicopter is easier to destroy than an office building or an oil tanker, a warhead with two or three pounds of explosive would be sufficient, or guided projectiles could be carried.

Old chap, do explain how a state-of-the-art attack helicopter with advanced evasion maneuverability and countermeasures is EASIER to destroy than a stationary office building  or a sitting duck floating bomb oil tanker?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/0 … nr-vpx.cnn

JSouthworth wrote:
The Ukrainian counter-offensive seems to be demonstrating the need for a small, fast and maneuverable, probably jet-propelled drone or Unmanned Combat Aircraft (UCAV) for the air-to-air role, that can counter the Russian attack helicopters such as the Kamov Ka52 "Alligator", which can launch anti-tank missiles to a range of about 5000m. This would be equipped with GPS and/or inertial systems for navigation and visual, infra-red and possibly millimetric wave radar systems for locating it's targets, either autonomously or under the control of an operator. In one sense at least a helicopter is easier to destroy than an office building or an oil tanker, a warhead with two or three pounds of explosive would be sufficient, or guided projectiles could be carried.

It's well known that the rotor systems of helicopters in flight show up very well on Doppler radar systems. So in principle it might be possible to have a hunter/killer team of two drones or UCAVs, one of which would fly at medium altitude using radar to detect the helicopter, then pass the data on the position, speed and course of the helicopter to the "killer" UCAV flying at low altitude. Although a high angle diving attack would also be effective against a helicopter like the Ka52, with it's semi-fixed forward firing armament, movable through a few degrees in elevation and azimuth; the helicopter crew would probably not see that coming, and even if they did they would not be able to elevate their 30mm cannon sufficiently to engage the incoming drone/UCAV.

JSouthworth wrote:

It's well known that the rotor systems of helicopters in flight show up very well on Doppler radar systems. So in principle it might be possible to have a hunter/killer team of two drones or UCAVs, one of which would fly at medium altitude using radar to detect the helicopter, then pass the data on the position, speed and course of the helicopter to the "killer" UCAV flying at low altitude. Although a high angle diving attack would also be effective against a helicopter like the Ka52, with it's semi-fixed forward firing armament, movable through a few degrees in elevation and azimuth; the helicopter crew would probably not see that coming, and even if they did they would not be able to elevate their 30mm cannon sufficiently to engage the incoming drone/UCAV.

So you can't answer the question. Got it, old chap.

Focuspuller wrote:
So you can't answer the question. Got it, old chap.

The warhead of the Stinger man-portable SAM weighs 3kg, about 40% of which is explosive, this will reliably bring down any helicopter and it's equally effective against fixed-wing tactical fighters. By comparison, a torpedo warhead typically contains 250 to 500 lb of explosive. Because you see, a ship has a much heavier and stronger structure than an aircraft....

JSouthworth wrote:
The warhead of the Stinger man-portable SAM weighs 3kg, about 40% of which is explosive, this will reliably bring down any helicopter and it's equally effective against fixed-wing tactical fighters. By comparison, a torpedo warhead typically contains 250 to 500 lb of explosive. Because you see, a ship has a much heavier and stronger structure than an aircraft....

You obviously did not watch the video, or have any knowledge of sea-drones EASILY carrying 500kg of TNT undetected into the hull of a Russian oil tanker. Try to keep up, old chap.

UKRAINE HITS RUSSIAN OIL TANKER WITH SEA DRONE HOURS AFTER ATTACKING NAVAL BASE

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/europe/u … index.html

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/0 … nr-vpx.cnn

Focuspuller wrote:
You obviously did not watch the video, or have any knowledge of sea-drones EASILY carrying 500kg of TNT undetected into the hull of a Russian oil tanker. Try to keep up, old chap.

UKRAINE HITS RUSSIAN OIL TANKER WITH SEA DRONE HOURS AFTER ATTACKING NAVAL BASE

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/europe/u … index.html

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/0 … nr-vpx.cnn

500kg of TNT detonating at the waterline will make a big hole, but an explosion under the keel is considered optimal. The ship basically breaks in two, repair is difficult and usually uneconomical.

JSouthworth wrote:
At the level of doctrine, the attempts by NATO air forces to subordinate the operations of unmanned combat aircraft or drones/UCAVs to those of manned aircraft, which are clearly motivated by a desire to retain manned aircraft for sentimental reasons rather than considerations of combat effectiveness, can be seen as an attempt to create a narrative to the effect that unmanned aircraft are inferior to manned aircraft in capability and therefore only suitable for use in a supporting role. The war in Ukraine is giving the lie to this.

The drone or UCAV offers the potential for a major improvement over the capabilities of manned fighters at both the individual and collective levels. The biggest single advantage is that it does not require a pilot and is therefore not subject to the physical limitations and costs that this implies. Probably twenty or thirty UCAVs can be put into service for the cost of one manned fighter of similar or inferior capability. Other advantages include superior high G maneuvering capability, target detection capability and radar stealth.

It isn't just the internal doctrine of NATO air forces that is now questionable, but the whole of NATO's AirLand Battle doctrine, with it's excessive emphasis on tactical air power. The experience of Ukraine suggests that in a real war-one in which the other side shoots back-the air forces would probably be able to deliver between 5 and 10 per cent of the tactical support to the ground forces that that the current doctrine requires them to deliver.

Anyone interested in an informed, expert, debunking of this simplistic, misinformed, rehashed nonsense from  an unqualified armchair general obsessed with field manuall minutia should read this article in the current Foreign Affairs, by STEPHEN BIDDLE,  Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle:

BACK IN THE TRENCHES
WHY NEW TECHNOLOGY HASN’T REVOLUTIONIZED WARFARE IN UKRAINE

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ … -%20112017

A snippet:

"Or consider aircraft losses. Some have suggested that modern antiaircraft missiles are so lethal to traditional piloted aircraft that these, too, are headed for the ash heap of history. And like tanks, aircraft have suffered heavy losses in Ukraine: in almost a year and a half of fighting, the Ukrainian air force has lost at least 68 aircraft, or more than a third of Ukraine’s prewar fleet; the Russian air force has lost more than 80 of its preinvasion inventory of 2,204 military aircraft. Yet this level of destruction is hardly unprecedented. In 1917, the life expectancy of a new British pilot was just 11 days. In 1943, the German Luftwaffe lost 251 percent of the aircraft it had at the beginning of the year. Its loss rate for 1944 was even higher: in the first half of the year alone, it lost 146 percent of its January strength. The Soviet loss rate for aircraft was 77 percent in 1943 and 66 percent in 1944. Yet few argued that the piloted airplane was obsolete in 1917 or 1943."

JSouthworth wrote:

Sometimes, as in your case, it may be necessary to put a lot of holes in something before it finally goes belly-up.

Oh Southy. Yet another threat of assault with a lethal weapon. Do carry on.

Focuspuller wrote:
Off your meds again? Or on them? Or just more evidence of cognitive deficiency. Cannot tell with your deranged conclusions based on imaginary facts.

"...the guy who thinks they faked the Apollo Moon landings."

WTF are you talking about. Absolutely false.  As I've already stated, I never said that. Or believe it. Cease or show where I did.  Spoiler....You CAN'T. So does that make you a liar or an idiot....or both?

And you obviously didn't read the article I referenced, because you don't refute a single thing Stephen Biddle wrote. I know actual, authoritative sources are alien to you. The readers of these posts will just have to decide who is more credible -  an expert, knowledgeable author citing actual facts, history, and scholarship in the field, or a self-referencing amateur playing wargames in his basement with toy drones, citing facts he pulls out of the imagined reality of his mind (or elsewhere) and drawing ridiculous conclusions from them.

Maybe you expect your word salad barrage of uncited "facts"  leading to your personal opinions  to be accepted as in any way credible. Not here, old chap. Not here.

"Well well, if it isn't our resident conspiracy theorist Li'l Ignoramus"

Quite an accusation from the loon who accuses Alec Baldwin of premeditated murder in the tragic "Rust" film on set prop firearm tragedy.

There you go again, looking for a comeback when there is no comeback. If this was a poker game, you'd have lost your shirt, jockey shorts and both socks by now.

As you quoted, the life expectancy for a British pilot in WW1 could be about two weeks, depending on which period of the war you're referring to. Today, the life expectancy of a combat pilot can be less than that. Taking the 1973 Arab Israeli War as an example, in the beginning the Israeli Air Force were losing about 50% of their sorties against the Egyptians at the Suez Canal. In two days they lost around 50 aircraft to the integrated gun and missile air defenses.

WW2 aircraft were slower and generally easier to fly than modern combat aircraft. Today it takes about 5 years to train a fast jet pilot to a high standard, at great expense. And today's manned combat aircraft are, allowing for inflation, also far more expensive than those of WW2. This makes their cost-effectiveness increasingly questionable when there are, in most if not all cases, alternative ways of getting the job done.

Focuspuller wrote:
"...the guy who thinks they faked the Apollo Moon landings."

WTF are you talking about. Absolutely false.  As I've already stated, I never said that. Or believe it. Cease or show where I did.  Spoiler....You CAN'T. So does that make you a liar or an idiot....or both?

Southy does that often - he deliberately misattributes in order to flame people. Usually, he'll persist doggedly with his misattributions despite people calling him out, hence cessation is unlikely.

JSouthworth wrote:
There you go again, looking for a comeback when there is no comeback. If this was a poker game, you'd have lost your shirt, jockey shorts and both socks by now.

As you quoted, the life expectancy for a British pilot in WW1 could be about two weeks, depending on which period of the war you're referring to. Today, the life expectancy of a combat pilot can be less than that. Taking the 1973 Arab Israeli War as an example, in the beginning the Israeli Air Force were losing about 50% of their sorties against the Egyptians at the Suez Canal. In two days they lost around 50 aircraft to the integrated gun and missile air defenses.

WW2 aircraft were slower and generally easier to fly than modern combat aircraft. Today it takes about 5 years to train a fast jet pilot to a high standard, at great expense. And today's manned combat aircraft are, allowing for inflation, also far more expensive than those of WW2. This makes their cost-effectiveness increasingly questionable when there are, in most if not all cases, alternative ways of getting the job done.

The figure of two weeks that Biddle quotes applies to "Bloody April" 1915, when RFC (Royal Flying Corps, at that time part of the Army) aircrews in obsolete aircraft were being shot down in droves. The obvious point there is that a high casualty rate on operations is not necessarily commensurate with combat effectiveness.

Marina_U wrote:
What the fuck are you talking about. This is not Russia’s war with Ukraine. This war is imposed by America. Only one America gets rich and prospers in this war. You’re blind and idiots. They’re taking my son to this war, and none of us need it. Damn America and all the freaks who support its policies.

So you are saying the U.S. took your son to fight in Ukraine against Russia?

JSouthworth wrote:
At the level of doctrine, the attempts by NATO air forces to subordinate the operations of unmanned combat aircraft or drones/UCAVs to those of manned aircraft, which are clearly motivated by a desire to retain manned aircraft for sentimental reasons rather than considerations of combat effectiveness, can be seen as an attempt to create a narrative to the effect that unmanned aircraft are inferior to manned aircraft in capability and therefore only suitable for use in a supporting role. The war in Ukraine is giving the lie to this.
/

Nonsense.

A.I. BRINGS THE ROBOT WINGMAN TO AERIAL COMBAT

"An Air Force program shows how the Pentagon is starting to embrace the potential of a rapidly emerging technology, with far-reaching implications for war-fighting tactics, military culture and the defense industry."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/27/us/p … force.html

The Pentagon apologizes this is not happening fast enough to satisfy JSouthworth, a self-proclaimed expert in the field.

rxz wrote:

So you are saying the U.S. took your son to fight in Ukraine against Russia?

In the first place, it was Putin's policy to invade Ukraine, not the US Government's policy for Russia to invade Ukraine. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine for the same reasons that Adolf Hitler invaded Poland (quickly followed by Stalin) and Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Putin claims that Russia is fighting to prevent the US from dominating the world, but how then can the US force a conflict between Russia and Ukraine? It's illogical.

Focuspuller wrote:

Anyone interested in an informed, expert, debunking of this simplistic, misinformed, rehashed nonsense from  an unqualified armchair general obsessed with field manuall minutia should read this article in the current Foreign Affairs, by STEPHEN BIDDLE,  Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle:

BACK IN THE TRENCHES
WHY NEW TECHNOLOGY HASN’T REVOLUTIONIZED WARFARE IN UKRAINE

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ … -%20112017

A snippet:

"Or consider aircraft losses. Some have suggested that modern antiaircraft missiles are so lethal to traditional piloted aircraft that these, too, are headed for the ash heap of history. And like tanks, aircraft have suffered heavy losses in Ukraine: in almost a year and a half of fighting, the Ukrainian air force has lost at least 68 aircraft, or more than a third of Ukraine’s prewar fleet; the Russian air force has lost more than 80 of its preinvasion inventory of 2,204 military aircraft. Yet this level of destruction is hardly unprecedented. In 1917, the life expectancy of a new British pilot was just 11 days. In 1943, the German Luftwaffe lost 251 percent of the aircraft it had at the beginning of the year. Its loss rate for 1944 was even higher: in the first half of the year alone, it lost 146 percent of its January strength. The Soviet loss rate for aircraft was 77 percent in 1943 and 66 percent in 1944. Yet few argued that the piloted airplane was obsolete in 1917 or 1943."

If we ask the questions, "Can manned tactical fighters still perform the roles performed by tactical aircraft in WW2 land warfare", and "Can they perform these roles in a cost-effective way", the answer in both cases is no. There are several reasons for this, here are a few;

1. Drones, UCAVs cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles can now perform many of their former roles more effectively with lower costs and risks.

2. Vulnerability of manned tactical fighters has increased with the development of gun and missile air defense systems to the point where they are not likely to survive in combat over the modern land battlefield. This makes it very doubtful whether they are still capable of effectively performing traditional roles in land warfare, such as battlefield interdiction/strike roles against enemy ground forces without suffering prohibitive loss rates.

3. The cost of manned tactical aircraft has escalated dramatically since WW2 whereas their vulnerability has increased due to their complexity.

NATO air forces in recent years have attempted to avoid the problem of vulnerability of manned tactical fighters to low altitude air defense systems, including guns and man-portable SAMs such as Stinger, Starstreak by adopting medium altitude tactics, dropping GPS guided bombs such as JDAM on targets using coordinates supplied by ground forces. This is not a satisfactory solution because;

1. Medium altitude operation makes the tactical excessively vulnerable to medium range SAM systems (eg Patriot, S300).

2. Dependence on ground forces means that the aircraft can no longer perform the battlefield strike/inderdiction role autonomously.

Focuspuller wrote:

Anyone interested in an informed, expert, debunking of this simplistic, misinformed, rehashed nonsense from  an unqualified armchair general obsessed with field manuall minutia should read this article in the current Foreign Affairs, by STEPHEN BIDDLE,  Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle:

BACK IN THE TRENCHES
WHY NEW TECHNOLOGY HASN’T REVOLUTIONIZED WARFARE IN UKRAINE

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ … -%20112017

A snippet:

"Or consider aircraft losses. Some have suggested that modern antiaircraft missiles are so lethal to traditional piloted aircraft that these, too, are headed for the ash heap of history. And like tanks, aircraft have suffered heavy losses in Ukraine: in almost a year and a half of fighting, the Ukrainian air force has lost at least 68 aircraft, or more than a third of Ukraine’s prewar fleet; the Russian air force has lost more than 80 of its preinvasion inventory of 2,204 military aircraft. Yet this level of destruction is hardly unprecedented. In 1917, the life expectancy of a new British pilot was just 11 days. In 1943, the German Luftwaffe lost 251 percent of the aircraft it had at the beginning of the year. Its loss rate for 1944 was even higher: in the first half of the year alone, it lost 146 percent of its January strength. The Soviet loss rate for aircraft was 77 percent in 1943 and 66 percent in 1944. Yet few argued that the piloted airplane was obsolete in 1917 or 1943."

If we ask the questions, "Can manned tactical fighters still perform the roles performed by tactical aircraft in WW2 land warfare", and "Can they perform these roles in a cost-effective way", the answer in both cases is no. There are several reasons for this, here are a few;

1. Drones, UCAVs cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles can now perform many of their former roles more effectively with lower costs and risks.

2. Vulnerability of manned tactical fighters has increased with the development of gun and missile air defense systems to the point where they are not likely to survive in combat over the modern land battlefield. This makes it very doubtful whether they are still capable of effectively performing traditional roles in land warfare, such as battlefield interdiction/strike roles against enemy ground forces without suffering prohibitive loss rates.

3. The cost of manned tactical aircraft has escalated dramatically since WW2 whereas their vulnerability has increased due to their complexity.

NATO air forces in recent years have attempted to avoid the problem of vulnerability of manned tactical fighters to low altitude air defense systems, including guns and man-portable SAMs such as Stinger, Starstreak by adopting medium altitude tactics, dropping GPS guided bombs such as JDAM on targets using coordinates supplied by ground forces. This is not a satisfactory solution because;

1. Medium altitude operation makes the tactical excessively vulnerable to medium range SAM systems (eg Patriot, S300).

2. Dependence on ground forces means that the aircraft can no longer perform the battlefield strike/inderdiction role autonomously.

JSouthworth wrote:
Congress recently voted down a $6 billion package of military aid for Ukraine. This again raises the question of why it is the United States taking a lead in providing military equipment for Ukraine when this war is primarily a European problem and it is therefore a European responsibility to provide Ukraine with what they need to defend their country and ultimately to defeat the Russian armed forces in Ukraine...
Part of the argument against aid for Ukraine in Congress may be that defeat for Russia will mean future loss of income from exports of military equipment, in particular combat aircraft.

Utter nonsense, as usual. The aid package was supported by a bipartisan majority in Congress, but failed because the US government is dysfunctional, held hostage by a rabid MAGAt minority, which you seem to support in its opposition to aiding Ukraine and crossing Putin, and not for your other ridiculous reasons, your obsession with unmanned warfare being one.

Edited to add:

"... this war is primarily a European problem and it is therefore a European responsibility..."

Which responsibility Europeans have been notoriously happy to leave to US leadership since the end of WWII.  It is nevertheless an American problem if Putin's invasion succeeds and further threatens NATO or NATO adjacent countries, triggering mutual defense responsibilities. Not to mention the encouragement to China, North Korea, and Iran a Russian victory would provide.

Weldphoto wrote:
Mr. Southworth,
This is a modeling/photography site. If we want news we can chose our source elsewhere.

There are newscasts, true. But what you have to understand is that the TV Networks are players, like the politicians, the military people and the non-state actors.