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The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Part 4

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Lord Emsworth said:
Attacking and taking territory, without it devolving into either Cringe-Krieg or meatgrinder tactics.
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By not playing the Russians game. By all means let the Russians carry on as they are but they are the ones in a 'meat grinder' not the Ukraine forces.
 
Doubt said:
The air force has been planning to phase them out for about 30 years now. First, the F-16s were to replace them. Except they could not do the job nearly as well. Then the F-35 was supposed to replace them. That idea ended about the same time the first big orders for the F-35 went through. Now they are supposed to be developing a new plane, which we won't see any time soon.

They are old and the air frames don't last forever. But there really is nothing to replace them with right now. They won't be sold to anyone any time soon.
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The US Army loves the A 10 so much so it stated that if the Air Force wanted to get them the Army would pick them up......

Thing is, the A 10 is a dedicated low level ground support plane the ones who are suppoded to repalce it are not. Speed was sacrificed to provide for the heavy armor which makes it resistent to ground fire; no way you could modify the Falcon or the F 35 to carry that much armor.
Yes, it is a sitting duck if there is effective air opposition, but how likely is that for the US?
 
Oddly enough, the movie that shows the A-10 's power is "Man Of Steel" in the battle of Smallville.
 
Childlike Empress said:
The Russians can hit everything inside the Ukraine, and in Italy, and in Germany, etc...
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The Russians can fire a missile and hit something just about anywhere in Ukraine. That they could choose what they'll hit is less well evidenced. (Unless all those hospitals the WHO were so angry about were deliberately targeted of course.)
 
theprestige said:
The F-16 can in fact do the job much better than the A-10 now.
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If there is a forward air controller with eyes on the target to feed information for a GPS guided bomb, yes. Assuming altitude is not exposing them to ground based guns.

If they have to pick their own targets while flying, no, the F-16 still has the same problem fast movers have always had. They cannot tell what is going on at ground level by themselves. A-10s can keep eyes on target much better thanks to lower speeds.

And the A-10 can still take a hit and come home. F-16 is not well protected.
 
Doubt said:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnc496-PPmFZVKlYxUnToA/videos

Not sure of the quality of this source yet. The guy is in Belorussia and does daily updates. Gets into why some efforts are not working so well for Russia. But also states things like 12 missiles fired from HIMARS getting shot down by S-400 missiles.

At the very least this is a not over the top version from the east that makes it a bit better than most.
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The bridge had been hit multiple times by himars missiles. The problem is those missiles aren't powerful enough to bring down a massive, will built concrete bridge. They are punching holes in the road instead. The guesstimate is that the damage is enough to stop the heaviest vehicles crossing.
 
Doubt said:
Unless some new AA missile warhead has been designed, this is still the case. I was just in Kalamazoo two weeks ago looking at this bit of battle damage.

https://warthognews.blogspot.com/2012/06/10-jet-engine-nacelle-damaged-by.html?m=1
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No. That missile took out the engine. The A10 can fly on one engine, like most twin engine planes, but armor did not protect that engine.

I used to be a big fan of the A10, but my opinion has been evolving. It needs to fly low and slow because it doesn't have good sensors, and without good sensors, that's the only way to get any situational awareness of what's happening on the ground. But low and slow is not actually an advantage in and of itself, it's merely the means to the ends of situational awareness. That's the real end requirement for ground attack and close air support. And there are better ways to achieve it now. We don't really need the A10 anymore.

Ukraine likely can't use the A10 much now because Russia still has better air coverage. But they might be able to use it longer term. We aren't going to give them F35's, and having a plane that can drop NATO standard precision bombs could be a big help, if they can suppress Russian air defense enough.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. That missile took out the engine. The A10 can fly on one engine, like most twin engine planes, but armor did not protect that engine.
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Yes. The engine is where it is so that it does not take out the other one and minimize damage to the rest of the plane. It survived because of how it is designed. That plane was fixed and flew again. Do engine damage like that to an F-16 or F-35 and you don't get the plane back.

I used to be a big fan of the A10, but my opinion has been evolving. It needs to fly low and slow because it doesn't have good sensors, and without good sensors, that's the only way to get any situational awareness of what's happening on the ground. But low and slow is not actually an advantage in and of itself, it's merely the means to the ends of situational awareness. That's the real end requirement for ground attack and close air support. And there are better ways to achieve it now. We don't really need the A10 anymore.
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It was designed as a visual bomber and improved from there. Even as far back as the Gulf War they started flying them at night by using infrared versions of the Maverick missile as a poor man's FLIR sensor and not firing the missile. They have them built in now.

The best way to spot targets on the ground has not changed at all. Still works best with a person on the ground picking the targets. The next best way is a plane with radar looking downward. That requires air superiority. The latest planes like the F-35 will not be doing close air support because their own protection won't help them in that role. Nobody is flying close air support in stealth mode.

Ukraine likely can't use the A10 much now because Russia still has better air coverage. But they might be able to use it longer term. We aren't going to give them F35's, and having a plane that can drop NATO standard precision bombs could be a big help, if they can suppress Russian air defense enough.
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They are old and we are not going to sell them to anyone. Russia's air coverage may be better than the 70's but their man portable weapons have not improved and if you fly low radar cannot track you. Planes built for the role won't go away until attack helicopter are gone and even those can still work without air superiority.
 
From ISW:

Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov announced on July 22 that personnel of the Chechen “West-Akhmat” Battalion (the formation of which was announced on June 26) will remain in Chechnya to further develop their skills and defend Chechen land if necessary. Kadyrov had previously stated that this battalion was formed with maximum urgency for deployment into Ukraine, which is consistent with ISW’s observations that the Kremlin likely seeks to deploy non-Russian ethnic minority groupings to support operations in Ukraine in the short term. However, Kadyrov now appears to be de-emphasizing the exigency of deployment, which may indicate that he is facing increasing domestic pressure to stop sending Chechens to fight in Russian operations in Ukraine. [notes omitted]​


170604790ea2c9af4f.jpg
 
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SpitfireIX said:
From ISW:

Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov announced on July 22 that personnel of the Chechen “West-Akhmat” Battalion (the formation of which was announced on June 26) will remain in Chechnya to further develop their skills and defend Chechen land if necessary. Kadyrov had previously stated that this battalion was formed with maximum urgency for deployment into Ukraine, which is consistent with ISW’s observations that the Kremlin likely seeks to deploy non-Russian ethnic minority groupings to support operations in Ukraine in the short term. However, Kadyrov now appears to be de-emphasizing the exigency of deployment, which may indicate that he is facing increasing domestic pressure to stop sending Chechens to fight in Russian operations in Ukraine. [notes omitted]​
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Kadyrov and his pretend compliance? Who could have expected that from a TikTok army?

To poke at a couple bits of good news, should they be true -

Ukraine’s losses have fallen to 30 dead per day – Zelenskyy


And...

More than 1,000 Russian troops encircled by Ukrainian Forces in Kherson region
 
Here's a pretty informative and hilarious analysis about "Wunderwaffe Thinking" and Al Bundy's four touchdowns. Reminded me very much of certain regulars here who have a WWII analogy for every current event they have bad information about. By Andrei Martyanov (whose name I've heard several times but never watched a video of before).

 
Aridas said:
Kadyrov and his pretend compliance? Who could have expected that from a TikTok army?

To poke at a couple bits of good news, should they be true -

Ukraine’s losses have fallen to 30 dead per day – Zelenskyy


And...

More than 1,000 Russian troops encircled by Ukrainian Forces in Kherson region
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That second one looks like a very optimistic take on this story

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1550436798475665409?s=20&t=4c_zlDqM-R8VB3VBCLd2EQ

Def Mon
@DefMon3

This is how I think the rumor got started.
1. I reported V. being close to being encircled.
2. A few hours later
@Kartinamaslom5
wrote something similar. I asked, he had no other source than looking at the map making coming to the same conclusion as i did.
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Def Mon
@DefMon3
·
20h
Replying to
@DefMon3
3. Then TPYXA takes his map and makes it clickbait, making it an encirclement.
4. I believe
@mhmck
picked up the info and used that to make his post.
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Childlike Empress said:
Here's a pretty informative and hilarious analysis about "Wunderwaffe Thinking" and Al Bundy's four touchdowns. Reminded me very much of certain regulars here who have a WWII analogy for every current event they have bad information about. By Andrei Martyanov (whose name I've heard several times but never watched a video of before).

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It's not our fault that Putin decided to make a lot of the same mistakes that were made in WWII. "Don't try an armoured offensive in the mud season" is pretty basic, for example.
 
Here is a video that has been making the round these days (graphic!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQAeyRShz38
Recent footage of a destroyed truck in the first third and further destroyed and abandoned equipment in the remainder of the video. Nothing special, videos like these are plenty.

The interesting thing is, that the wreckage is fairly old, while clearly the footage isn't. A commentor on Reddit has pointed this out and identified the truck as a piece of equipment that has been destroyed in April.
A totally NSFW picture here:
https://i.imgur.com/9sgbxg1.jpg
The same picture with black bars over the dead and the timestamp 22.04.2022:
https://i.postimg.cc/526Qhbjr/uuurakk.jpg

For up to three months have these dead Russians been left there to decompose. Chances are, that they just cannot be retrieved by either side. :boggled:
 
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