On percentages.
"Even though people died yesterday, and critical infrastructure was hit, yesterday was a resounding victory for Ukraine over Russia in the missile strike warfare. The first of hopefully many such events.
The victory in the missile warfare was multi-facetted and multi-vectored.
It was a tactical, strategical, political and psychological victory that shook Russia to the core.
I will now go through the various facetts of the victory.
First of all, by launching the two deep strikes Ukraine forced Russia to attack before they where ready. This set the stage for later in the day. As I mentioned yesterday this broke up the attack into two separate waves.
The deep strikes also limited the weight of the Russian attack.
They had scheduled and loaded 20 heavy bombers, 3 was destroyed in the attack, and 3 more was held back for repairs and checks. On average each plane carries 5 missiles, and out of 100 airborne missiles only 70 was launched.
The naval strikes was cancelled due to the ships not being in position, further removing about 30 missiles.
Beside the temporary tactical win this means that Russia are down at least 3 heavy bombers, and will be permanently limited in missile strike capacity.
So, it was both a tactical and strategic longterm victory.
Ukraine set a world record that is almost unbelievable.
Prior to the war we guesstimated that modern air defence would have an 80 percent hit rate against singular missile targets in wartime conditions.
Unofficially the number of intercepts was set as low as 20 percent for large barrages of missiles like what Russia has sent towards Ukraine.
The reason there is so little missile air defence systems around the world is that they where mostly seen as point defence against rogue missiles, and only as a psychological cushion for the population against big air attacks or missile barrage strikes.
Turns out that the West and the military industrial complex is far better than even our hyperbole and their claims.
Yesterday Ukraine achieved 85.7 percent hit rate against a barrage. 60 out of 70 missiles was taken down, and the ones not shot down was against secondary targets that was less well defended.
Against singular objects IRIS-T is still holding at 100 percent kill rate.
Expect this new world record to put fire under the arses of all western governments to procure ginormous arrays of air defence systems, both against ordinary missiles and nukes.
After all, the **** really works, and will produce a real tangible result on the survivability of even a full on nuclear war.
This new world record was obviously a tactical win, but the strategic ramifications are that Ukraine is getting very close to making Russian missile strikes impotent. I would sort of argue that they already are that from a military standpoint where you always acknowledge the risk of losses to life and equipment.
And Russia knows this was a major loss of capability into the future.
In Russian military circles this was the heaviest blow, they knew they would lose planes, and they had already counted on it. But having an entire class of weapons neutered? That was a blow to them, they also believed in the 80/20 rule. Except that for Russia it is not 80/20, it is more like 20/1... Let me explain.
SAAB and Raytheon went through the blueprints and even the missiles at the Ukrainian missile factory over night and today.
What they found is quite interesting.
Ukraine has built something that is 1.5 times more effective than the original Tomahawk Cruise Missile. Even a Block 1 Tomahawk would have overpowered Russia, but upping from that one is significant.
It means that Ukrainian weapons manufacturing is getting well into the big league.
They cobbled this together in 4 years, the first 3 was spent on making a one to one equivalent, and in the last 9 months they upgraded it with newfound western knowledge to a 1.5.
Just to explain, the current leader of the cruise missile pack is the RBS-15 Gungnir, it is a 3.
That is fully autonomous AI, aka Hell Class Weapon.
And no, this is not my nomenclature, it is used all over now for almost invincible weapon systems based on AI.
But, Gungnirs aside, out of all public knowledge cruise missiles Ukraine right now has the number 5 ranking bad boy.
There are 4 western in front, and 5 behind. After that you theoretically have a chinese cruise missile, and after that comes the Russian junk piles.
In short, Russia has nothing that can take it down in any reliable way. Any hit would be a lucky shot.
In the Russian military fanboy Telegram channels they are shaking and s***ing themselves aplenty today.
Same with the political elite.
The military is far more stoic, they knew that it was just a question of time before Ukraine built something that could hit them in the ass, or the west gave them something like that.
So, they had factored this in.
And Russia knows that realistically Ukraine will only be able to lob around 100 of them per year, and they can take that on the chin.
They are though a bit shook up that it was so good that their much vaunted S-400 couldn't even get a lock on them due to stealth capability.
Taking out a few planes was both a tactical and strategic win, politically it was a win, and it was a psychological win that will reverberate for weeks around Russia since they have to adapt to knowing that Ukraine can at any time hit anything in Moscow, and they can't any longer hit Kyiv reliably.
At the same time Ukraine used more mundane stuff and hit other airfields and bases around Ukraine, making yesterday a win in targets, number killed, equipment value... all metrics went to Ukraine.
And this on a Russian barrage day.
As battle victories go this was up there with Kyiv Goodwill, Kharkiv Repositioning, and the Kherson Tactical Manouvre. Yes, I am using the Russian names for the battle losses ironically.
Counterfire
To produce a knockout blow Ukraine need more tanks, more artillery and more airforce.
I often allude to this, and so do most pundits.
But, there is another very specific equipment set that could produce the same result.
And that is artillery counter-fire radar systems.
Obviously Ukraine had a few old Soviet ones, and they have received a few modern western ones.
So, let me explain why this would make a very large difference if Ukraine received many more.
The western artillery is much more precise, and have longer reach, compared to the Russian systems.
This means that theoretically, one western howitzer could sit out of reach and pick off every single Russian artillery piece over a of 10km of frontline.
Well, at least if each one had a conter-fire radar.
In this example we are using the 155mm standard shell, with a base-bleed you get 20km of pick-your-russkie at the frontline.
A Bonus would give 30km, and Excaliber rounds would give a 40km stretch. For the latter you would need 2 radars, and it would become exorbitantly expensive.
But, you get the gist.
With 100 radars you could empy the entire frontline of Russian artillery within a week.
Obviously you would not have blown up every piece of artillery, even Russia would in the end pull them back.
But, Russia without massive artillery would just be Russia in the form of a bunch of drunk dudes in fake Adidas pants.
I hope Ukraine will get more of these radars.
Even a few would shorten the war considerably, and we already know that Ukraine are really good at this with the few they already have.
Peace
Russia has gotten a new offer to mull over.
-All land returned to Ukraine
-War reparations to Ukraine
-War criminals to Hague or EU Court, with the final agreeing negotiation team being excempt from participation.
This has obvious psychologic ramification on the will to negotiate and make peace on the Russian leaders, whoever now they are
-Nuclear Weapons Assymetry, Russia will no longer be on pair with NATO
in return for
-Security Guarantees for Russia that the NATO-country of Ukraine will not attack Russia
-Security Guarantees for Russia that NATO will not attack Russia
-Lifting of sanctions on a sliding scale that will be agreed upon, against tangible targets towards democracy and freedom of speach and press, and fulfilment of reparations and judicial accountability
Someone in Russia answered, believed to be from upon high among the Siloviki: We will not sign the treaty with Ukraine, but we would sign with NATO after negotiations.
It was not Naryshkin, so most likely Patrushev feeling downbeaten, and he would really like that immunity (something that Naryshkin does not need).
You really need to understand Russia and the Russian psyche for this mindwarp.
They attacked a lesser state and got asswhopped.
But, if they can sign that treaty with NATO, it means that they lost against all of the combined power of NATO and not to Ukraine. Much easier to sell that to Ivan Russkofsky in Blyatograd.
It is also diplomatically much better for Russia to have a treaty with NATO since it would then be up to NATO to keep Ukraine on a leash, both as a partner and a member state.
Obviously that would pish of Ukraine mightily.
So, somewhere along the line they will also sign the document by necessity, but they might end up on the second line of signatures or some such nonsense... and it might be that Ukraine and Russia are in two separate Rooms with Stoltenberg carrying papers in between.
Diplomacy may seem silly, but these things most often do matter a lot.
What matters is that Russia all of a sudden seems "softer" on the negotiations part.
But, expect them to bargain like a used horse salesman in Miami on a sunny friday afternoon in need of a big sale to please the boss so he can buy cocaine and a Rolex to show off to his mistress.
My bet is that they will go for all they are worth to keep that Sevastopol base".