Russian special military operation in Ukraine #21

Today they are still without any proper SHORAD/SPAAG system with the Bradley Linebacker and the Avenger as their main options, but having said that the US seems to take air superiority for granted no matter what type of conflict they are involved in.

Every new generation of Soviet and Russian air defence system has been adapted over and over to be more mobile to be able to operate very effectively within an IADS but also to operate without one, to have more ready to fire missiles, to extend the reach and performance of the missiles, to be able to fire while moving making yourself a more difficult target for enemy air power...

Western SEAD capabilities are OK... they are not as amazing as they like to pretend... with the conflict in Kosovo we saw even antiquated systems could evade the attentions of HATO air power... newer more capable systems and they would have been losing aircraft at a horrendous rate. They didn't fly below about 6 to 8km altitude and committed no helicopters because of their fear of MANPADS... which of course is justified.

Their problem was that while flying higher will protect them from MANPADS it wont protect them from TOR or Pantsir or BUK or S-350 or a range of other new system... even Kornet-EM in the HE warhead equipped model can hit slow flying targets up to 10km altitude and flares and chaff will do nothing to stop them.

The western ground forces have taken for granted that they will enjoy air superiority but this conflict in Ukraine shows even when the IADS is down separate vehicles can operate on their own or in batteries and still shoot down planes in passive optics mode if needed.

The Ukraine as an OK set of systems... vastly better than any other HATO country or HATO as a force combined, but it is nothing compared with the systems the Russians have and day by day are only getting better.

HATO might be in for a shock the next time it intervenes in regard to the sort of equipment Russia could provide and after this conflict is more likely to be inclined to provide.

Igla-S and Kornet even in their early models are excellent weapons... the west manged to bind Russia into tightly controlling the sales and distribution of MANPADS because of the risk to civilian airliners and these weapons getting into the wrong hands... well after throwing 20K plus Stingers at Kiev and not having any idea of where they went or what they were used for they have no leg to stand on in the argument over Russian licence production deals for Igla-S to any country on the planet...

These guys are fucking stupid , hey if they want to play nazi do it in private

But play a stupid game, you win a stupid prize

It is the nazis that know there is no point in surrendering... either death or a lifetime in prison... different people will have different views on that choice but either way the Russians should accommodate them...

Good question . As you have previously said " .....they ( SAM systems ) can be overwhelmed .

To actually overwhelm them you need really enormous numbers and AFAIK they haven't managed to overwhelm any Russian SAM batteries.

They have overwhelmed individual vehicles that were operating on their own, but to overwhelm a fully deployed AD battery force they would need a serious concentration of force... which is what the Russians want... they want the Orcs to drive 12 HIMARS into position and start launching rockets at an AD site... especially if the AD site is fake because while they are hammering the site and destroying decoys the Russians can send drones to locate the launchers and monitor them and watch what building they drive in to to hide afterwards.

Destroying 12 of those buildings is valuable because not only do you get the HIMARS vehicles but you also get their support crews and ammo and spare parts and support equipment.

They get a couple of destroyed decoys... who cares... decoys are cheap and expendable and they are made to be destroyed so the real things get ignored.

For some third world country some sneak attack could be mounted to take out their major air defence equipment, but the Russians are in a position where they can be on the look out for such an attack and take on the attackers during the attack to reduce its effectiveness and to cause damage.

his implies a thinking , where remote detection was not or could not be carried out against a ground moving target . But is this assumption valid ? I know that AWACS in Iraq , could detect a column of advancing Iraqi Tanks

They could in a flat open desert with no enemy jamming or forces attacking their radar platforms... equally there might be ESM equipment they might have to disguise their real forces or create false ones in places they want the enemy to attack.

They have all sorts of radiation emitters to simulate SAM radars... search and tracking models so a dummy battery could be emitting all the signals and radar that a real battery emits... the only way to know it is not real is to destroy it and then capture the territory and have a look on the ground... which is unlikely to happen in this case.

This information is then sent to their missiles and programmed in . However as far as I know , all missiles now , as well as relying on GPS navigation , Also use secondary navigation . In case of Himars , it is inertial and in case of cruise missile it is terrain following and with terminal video in real - time on local search area . And as you said other Radars are available that work on imaging particular targets in 3D . The Ukrainians have not been given Cruise missiles , but perhaps Harpoon also .

Does not help them if there is only 6 rockets per vehicle which can be shot down in flight.

But you said land based SAM can not do this ! And new design and alteration can not be done now , and bringing naval vessel close to land and loosing them not an option .

SA-20 does not need to be anywhere near the front line of the battlefield and both TOR and Pantsir can fire while moving... it is the very big heavy SAMs that cannot be fired while moving... S-300 and S-400 and S-350, but their long range means they don't need to move very much at all.

So the option left for S300 , apart from having SHORAD covering it , is to trade missile for missile

Using long range heavy SAMs against artillery rockets would only be done in desperation... if this was WWIII against the US and it was fighting in Finland or Poland or Hungary the obvious solution would be to fire S-300 missiles at the HIMARS launchers themselves... they are very accurate against ground targets and you could use small nuclear warheads to get entire batteries with one missile if you wanted.

Standard procedure is to base a Pantsir or TOR battery or two with each S-300 and S-400 and S-350 battery to deal with any threats to the larger SAMs.

All candidates are hopeless and less than appealing, and the country simply has no-one better to offer. What a joke, so much for the "exceptionalist West"

The quality of the leadership in the west is absolutely dire and a symptom that better people don't have much of a chance in such a job... you need to be teflon slippery if you want to make it to the top these days and if people have to disappear then they have to disappear.

This results in a very specific type of person winning the race.

They need personalities that know on which side the bread is buttered, can be trusted to kick the can along, and manage affairs without having being told explicitly what to do

Exactly... they are actually better if they don't have intelligence... they need to shut up and look pretty and do as they are told... Boris flip flops so much he obviously didn't need to be pretty... well you can't argue he is pretty stupid.

I am surprised there are not more dumb blonde jokes fired in his direction.

The Antonovsky Bridge is getting hammered again tonight, probably by HIMARS.

Hope so... the more they are used the easier it will be to track them all down.

That footage is from the head of the Military-Civilian Administration of Kherson.

Here is clearer footage, btw.

The video you just posted has this under it...

‍ Ukrainian resources publish videos of shell hits on the Antonovsky Bridge, there have already been many such attacks
It is not known whether the shooting is exactly fresh, but they beat, bastards, for sure. The supports, as usual, are intact and after the shelling, these holes in the canvas are sealed. In any case, another confirmation that the bridge withstands these attacks.

So these are Ukrainian sources and the person posting the video does not believe these Ukrainian sources... they have no reason to of course...

According to one Serbian analysts/journalists/whatever he is told by people on the ground that they don't bother with intercepting attacks on bridges because cost of missiles expended for interception is much higher than cost of fixing the damage to the bridge (or just using pontoons if it does go down)

Which just highlights the common sense practical approach to war of the Serbs and the Russians.

If this was a US held bridge they would be demanding a new version of Patriot that an shoot down artillery rockets... it will take ten years to modify and will only work half the time and cost billions of dollars and millions of dollars per missile... and likely not work, but even if it did they would buy 20 and not use them because they are too expensive.

As mentioned, bridges can be rebuilt and temporary bridges can go up very quickly... even pontoon bridges... it does not always make sense to defend a target like this.

The Crimean bridge has the problem that it is an enormous structure to defend... they don't have to hit it all... just taking out one section would be enough, but from the Russian perspective defending the entire bridge is important.

We have seen barges near the bridge with corner reflectors on them creating a large radar return to fool anti ship missiles using radar guidance, but their advantage is that most of Kievs forces are out of range of the bridge so some sneaky attack would be needed and in volume again to overwhelm defences which will deal with only a few launches of a few weapons.

At the end of the day this is mostly about pride... considering all the buildings they are building they could build a dozen smaller bridges, but over time as the Orcs get pushed back and out of Donbass territory attacks on bridges and things in their rear area will become much more difficult and costly.

Regular wrote:

Nothing serious? This time it is serious and won't be repaired until UA artillery is in the range. You don't need to bring the bridge down for it to be non-functional. I bet Ukrainians will still attack it after day or two.
Pontoons and barges will be used.

As long as the piers are intact collapsed spans are not an issue. Metal prefab spans can be assembled onsite and emplaced in less than 2 hours.