The end?
- Thread starter borolad259
- Start date
Update
"The flag is now flying over Kozachi Laheri as Ukraine officially declared it liberated from Russia.
This is the final confirmation of the prolonged battle to infiltrate, take, and hold the Village until it was sufficiently secured to proclaimed as liberated.
It is still probably a month away from any furthering of the offensive down towards Crimea, the reason is that Ukraine has to build up sufficient forces and supplies to be able to push through, and it is for obvious reasons slow going since they have to use barges for everything.
Tokmak
The Russians have started the evacuation of Tokmak.
The civilian staff is heading towards Mariupol and onwards to Russia.
The Security Services are pulling out to Mariupol and Berdyansk.
Military command staffs Battalion and upwards are withdrawing to Melitopol.
Ukrainian civilians are also moving out, being funneled by the Russians towards Crimea, but many are trying to go the other way towards predesignated areas and passages towards Ukrainian controlled space.
The latter are aided by special forces and resistance cells.
In the next step civilian staff will be moved out of Melitopol and Berdyansk to alleviate the food problems, and to prepare for further expected Ukrainian advances.
We all know this pattern from the Kherson "Goodwill Gesture".
Tanks
The counters back at HQ swears that there are only 8 functioning T90Ms and T90M2 Proryv tanks in Ukraine on the Russian side, and that there are roughly 100 T72s that are operable.
They also state that Russia has less than 40 percent of their artillery remaining in Ukraine compared to peak values, and that Russia is down to 20 percent fire rate per barrel compared to peak numbers.
Radar systems is even worse, Russia now sends new units directly from the factory and they on average survive 2 weeks before being disassembled by artillery.
This means that Russia now is down to 5 percent radar-capacity compared to peak numbers.
This means that AD is almost non-existent, and very little counter-battery fire can be performed.
Conclusion
It seems to finally have dawned on Russia that they just can't sustain losing 1200 soldiers per day infinitely, and even with that casualty/POV-rate they can't contain the weight of the Ukrainian push.
Just last night Ukraine pushed the Russian 1.8km backwards.
Also, spreading out the abysmal numbers of heavy equipment and AD/Radars across such a vast area is just not giving the results needed in protection.
It is clear that Russia is stepping backwards in the direction of Tokmak and that they are trying to limit the upcoming Goodwill Gesture as much as possible.
Yes, they are obviously fighting like maniacs in this direction too, but the main effort of defence seems to be longterm to try to hinder Eastward expansion in an attempt to "funnel" the Ukrainians towards Melitopol over the Berdyansk/Mariupol direction.
We can see this since the Russians are concentrating their meagre resources on Defence Building along that road from Tokmak, and none is performed on the Tokmak to Melitopol road.
Obviously Kherson is a lost cause for the Russians as soon as Melitopol has fallen.
So, currently the Russian plan is to stop the advance, and if that does not work fall back in steps towards Melitopol and then Eastwards to create a new strong frontline Eastwards defending Berdyansk and Mariupol that can somewhat be supplied by ship.
Obviously they intend to try to hold Crimea, but that will not be possible longterm.
Ukraine?
They say meh, and have other plans, but more about that later when it is time to talk about what the Ukrainians truly are up too.
We will see!"
I'll summarise some of what we learned yesterday. Wagner have elected as their new leader one of their best commanders, who also happens to be number 2 in the world ranking of assassins/hitmen. Responsible for about half of the mysterious oligarch deaths over the last couple of years ... apparently.
"The flag is now flying over Kozachi Laheri as Ukraine officially declared it liberated from Russia.
This is the final confirmation of the prolonged battle to infiltrate, take, and hold the Village until it was sufficiently secured to proclaimed as liberated.
It is still probably a month away from any furthering of the offensive down towards Crimea, the reason is that Ukraine has to build up sufficient forces and supplies to be able to push through, and it is for obvious reasons slow going since they have to use barges for everything.
Tokmak
The Russians have started the evacuation of Tokmak.
The civilian staff is heading towards Mariupol and onwards to Russia.
The Security Services are pulling out to Mariupol and Berdyansk.
Military command staffs Battalion and upwards are withdrawing to Melitopol.
Ukrainian civilians are also moving out, being funneled by the Russians towards Crimea, but many are trying to go the other way towards predesignated areas and passages towards Ukrainian controlled space.
The latter are aided by special forces and resistance cells.
In the next step civilian staff will be moved out of Melitopol and Berdyansk to alleviate the food problems, and to prepare for further expected Ukrainian advances.
We all know this pattern from the Kherson "Goodwill Gesture".
Tanks
The counters back at HQ swears that there are only 8 functioning T90Ms and T90M2 Proryv tanks in Ukraine on the Russian side, and that there are roughly 100 T72s that are operable.
They also state that Russia has less than 40 percent of their artillery remaining in Ukraine compared to peak values, and that Russia is down to 20 percent fire rate per barrel compared to peak numbers.
Radar systems is even worse, Russia now sends new units directly from the factory and they on average survive 2 weeks before being disassembled by artillery.
This means that Russia now is down to 5 percent radar-capacity compared to peak numbers.
This means that AD is almost non-existent, and very little counter-battery fire can be performed.
Conclusion
It seems to finally have dawned on Russia that they just can't sustain losing 1200 soldiers per day infinitely, and even with that casualty/POV-rate they can't contain the weight of the Ukrainian push.
Just last night Ukraine pushed the Russian 1.8km backwards.
Also, spreading out the abysmal numbers of heavy equipment and AD/Radars across such a vast area is just not giving the results needed in protection.
It is clear that Russia is stepping backwards in the direction of Tokmak and that they are trying to limit the upcoming Goodwill Gesture as much as possible.
Yes, they are obviously fighting like maniacs in this direction too, but the main effort of defence seems to be longterm to try to hinder Eastward expansion in an attempt to "funnel" the Ukrainians towards Melitopol over the Berdyansk/Mariupol direction.
We can see this since the Russians are concentrating their meagre resources on Defence Building along that road from Tokmak, and none is performed on the Tokmak to Melitopol road.
Obviously Kherson is a lost cause for the Russians as soon as Melitopol has fallen.
So, currently the Russian plan is to stop the advance, and if that does not work fall back in steps towards Melitopol and then Eastwards to create a new strong frontline Eastwards defending Berdyansk and Mariupol that can somewhat be supplied by ship.
Obviously they intend to try to hold Crimea, but that will not be possible longterm.
Ukraine?
They say meh, and have other plans, but more about that later when it is time to talk about what the Ukrainians truly are up too.
We will see!"
I'll summarise some of what we learned yesterday. Wagner have elected as their new leader one of their best commanders, who also happens to be number 2 in the world ranking of assassins/hitmen. Responsible for about half of the mysterious oligarch deaths over the last couple of years ... apparently.
News just in. Thought to be "strike 1". If Putin is still alive, he will be bricking it.
According to our man, the only person in Putin's cupboard who might be able to track down and stop this fella is Girkin. Irony of ironies.
According to our man, the only person in Putin's cupboard who might be able to track down and stop this fella is Girkin. Irony of ironies.
Jonny_Rondos_Disco_pants
Well-known member
There was other positives, posted online, only 5 Leopards destroyed so far. Pro UA account so could be wrong.
Financial
"I have read about, and heard about, most large heists on the planet.
But the robbery just performed is so infathomably large that it is paling everything.
Let me explain.
Russia is selling oil to India and China against Rupee and Yuan, and there is a 6 month creditline on the sales.
The oil is to 90 percent shipped on Indian and Chinese ships, or in the case of China it is partially delivered via pipeline.
Both parties are holding to the 55USD/BBL pricecap.
So, there was not a lot of profit in it to begin with.
6 months ago both countries switched from paying in USD to paying in local currency.
No harm in that, after all they are all best buddies in BRICS aren't they?
Well... not so much when you are dealing with countries that truly does not give a **** if they can get away with it.
3 days ago China banned the circulation of Yuan outside of China.
This meant that Russia has to use the money inside of China and buy chinese only goods with it.
In and ofitself this is nut such a huge problem, Russia can legally buy a lot of things from China that the Russian economy and population need.
The side effect of it is though that it puts increased strain on the rouble since Russia all of a sudden is not getting an influx from China in foreign currency, this in turn drives up the exchange rate visavi the Yuan and all other currencies on the planet, further raising inflation and prices for food and other consumables.
Oops!
Yesterday India followed in Chinas fotsteps and also banned the circulation of the Rupee outside of India.
There was though a difference here.
India has banned food sales due to the failed harvest, and India does not produce enough of other exportable goods to offset the huge lump of money that is currently stuck in India.
In other words, India basically just stole 6 months worth of oil money.
This means that to not lose everything Russia is forced to buy anything they can, and then demand becomes so large that Indian goods prices skyrockets improving Indian economy and further harming the Russian economy.
The big winners are though the two trading currencies, Euro and USD, because all of a sudden both China and India are forced to use either of those two for all outside transactions, yes most was already done in those currencies, but a 10 percent increase will still be the result.
At the same time the Russian Rouble has returned to a downwards trend again...
Sad Bank of Russia Noises.
On top of that China and India just killed Russias dream of a common BRICS currency, it was their hail mary to get their economy stabilised."
"I have read about, and heard about, most large heists on the planet.
But the robbery just performed is so infathomably large that it is paling everything.
Let me explain.
Russia is selling oil to India and China against Rupee and Yuan, and there is a 6 month creditline on the sales.
The oil is to 90 percent shipped on Indian and Chinese ships, or in the case of China it is partially delivered via pipeline.
Both parties are holding to the 55USD/BBL pricecap.
So, there was not a lot of profit in it to begin with.
6 months ago both countries switched from paying in USD to paying in local currency.
No harm in that, after all they are all best buddies in BRICS aren't they?
Well... not so much when you are dealing with countries that truly does not give a **** if they can get away with it.
3 days ago China banned the circulation of Yuan outside of China.
This meant that Russia has to use the money inside of China and buy chinese only goods with it.
In and ofitself this is nut such a huge problem, Russia can legally buy a lot of things from China that the Russian economy and population need.
The side effect of it is though that it puts increased strain on the rouble since Russia all of a sudden is not getting an influx from China in foreign currency, this in turn drives up the exchange rate visavi the Yuan and all other currencies on the planet, further raising inflation and prices for food and other consumables.
Oops!
Yesterday India followed in Chinas fotsteps and also banned the circulation of the Rupee outside of India.
There was though a difference here.
India has banned food sales due to the failed harvest, and India does not produce enough of other exportable goods to offset the huge lump of money that is currently stuck in India.
In other words, India basically just stole 6 months worth of oil money.
This means that to not lose everything Russia is forced to buy anything they can, and then demand becomes so large that Indian goods prices skyrockets improving Indian economy and further harming the Russian economy.
The big winners are though the two trading currencies, Euro and USD, because all of a sudden both China and India are forced to use either of those two for all outside transactions, yes most was already done in those currencies, but a 10 percent increase will still be the result.
At the same time the Russian Rouble has returned to a downwards trend again...
Sad Bank of Russia Noises.
On top of that China and India just killed Russias dream of a common BRICS currency, it was their hail mary to get their economy stabilised."
Droning on and on
"Drones, drones, and some more drones
Last night was the largest drone attack in history, a sign of what is to come in the future of this war.
180 drones slammed into 5 different regions in Russia.
Pskov had four Iljushin transport planes blown up together with a lot of infrastructure in the military airfield.
GRU 2nd Brigade Special Forces had their base blown to smithereens.
Warehouses, depots, fuel storages, refineries, command centers, bridges, a missile microchip production plant...
The list just goes on and on.
The hit republics are: Bryansk, Kaluga, Moscow, Oryol and Ryazan.
What was apparent is that the Russian Air Defence has broken down completely since they achieved only around 10 percent take down ratio (mostly in Moscow).
This means that Ukraine can safely dismantle Russia piece by piece.
Yes, there are thousands of military targets to hit, but there are also thousands of bridges, factories, industries, warehouses, and construction companies to hit.
With 100 drones on average per day and a 10 percent takedown that is still more than 30 000 drones hitting targets per year.
This means that in the first year of drone operations they can take out pretty much all economy in an area 650km around Ukraine and counting.
Imagine the logistics headache from that one as Russia will be forced to move its entire industrial base beyond this line, and then move all of the goods through what will become a wasteland of blown up rail, roads, bridges...
Most importantly it is sending a clear signal that Russias plan to keep up the war even if kicked out of Ukraine will not work since Ukraine will be able to launch oodles of more missiles and drones upon Russia.
Political Inching
Something that did not end up on the news.
The US finally relented and permitted Ukraine to use Western made gear on Crimea and the Kersh Bridge.
This followed after Ukraine proving that they can hit it anyway, and us using a Gungnir on that AD unit.
(Ukraine claiming it was a homegrown missile was just to keep us out of the discussion on our request, Ukraine has nothing with that precission and stealth yet.)
This is in military lingo called Mission Creep, it is when a mission over time expands and takes on a life on its own.
I am certain that this Political Creep will continue, and that if the war is still ongoing come late spring that Ukraine will be allowed to use Western weapons systems inside Russia.
Diplomacy
Ukraine will come Winter start negotiations with Russia.
The point of this is to offer Russia to withdraw voluntarily and without being fired upon, and through safe corridors, from Crimea.
This will be complete with their equipment and all hardware, this is a considerable bonus for the equipment starved Russians.
This is a masterstroke on Zelenzkyy's part, because if Russia refuses, they have in the eyes of the Crimeans made the choice to pull the war into Crimea itself, and that makes Russia the bad guys in the eyes of the locals that originally supported Russia.
If it works it will save lives of soldiers on both sides, and civilians on both sides.
Personally I do not see Russia saying yes, but longterm benefits will still be there."
"Drones, drones, and some more drones
Last night was the largest drone attack in history, a sign of what is to come in the future of this war.
180 drones slammed into 5 different regions in Russia.
Pskov had four Iljushin transport planes blown up together with a lot of infrastructure in the military airfield.
GRU 2nd Brigade Special Forces had their base blown to smithereens.
Warehouses, depots, fuel storages, refineries, command centers, bridges, a missile microchip production plant...
The list just goes on and on.
The hit republics are: Bryansk, Kaluga, Moscow, Oryol and Ryazan.
What was apparent is that the Russian Air Defence has broken down completely since they achieved only around 10 percent take down ratio (mostly in Moscow).
This means that Ukraine can safely dismantle Russia piece by piece.
Yes, there are thousands of military targets to hit, but there are also thousands of bridges, factories, industries, warehouses, and construction companies to hit.
With 100 drones on average per day and a 10 percent takedown that is still more than 30 000 drones hitting targets per year.
This means that in the first year of drone operations they can take out pretty much all economy in an area 650km around Ukraine and counting.
Imagine the logistics headache from that one as Russia will be forced to move its entire industrial base beyond this line, and then move all of the goods through what will become a wasteland of blown up rail, roads, bridges...
Most importantly it is sending a clear signal that Russias plan to keep up the war even if kicked out of Ukraine will not work since Ukraine will be able to launch oodles of more missiles and drones upon Russia.
Political Inching
Something that did not end up on the news.
The US finally relented and permitted Ukraine to use Western made gear on Crimea and the Kersh Bridge.
This followed after Ukraine proving that they can hit it anyway, and us using a Gungnir on that AD unit.
(Ukraine claiming it was a homegrown missile was just to keep us out of the discussion on our request, Ukraine has nothing with that precission and stealth yet.)
This is in military lingo called Mission Creep, it is when a mission over time expands and takes on a life on its own.
I am certain that this Political Creep will continue, and that if the war is still ongoing come late spring that Ukraine will be allowed to use Western weapons systems inside Russia.
Diplomacy
Ukraine will come Winter start negotiations with Russia.
The point of this is to offer Russia to withdraw voluntarily and without being fired upon, and through safe corridors, from Crimea.
This will be complete with their equipment and all hardware, this is a considerable bonus for the equipment starved Russians.
This is a masterstroke on Zelenzkyy's part, because if Russia refuses, they have in the eyes of the Crimeans made the choice to pull the war into Crimea itself, and that makes Russia the bad guys in the eyes of the locals that originally supported Russia.
If it works it will save lives of soldiers on both sides, and civilians on both sides.
Personally I do not see Russia saying yes, but longterm benefits will still be there."
Jonny_Rondos_Disco_pants
Well-known member
i can’t see them being launched from next door, there was talk of launches from within Russia and a few sources saying long distance drones from in Ukraine.
Russian sources mainly say Estonia.
Russian sources mainly say Estonia.
I've seen a few things speculated. Seems a lot of resource to launch from within Russia for that impact.
Seems a long way to send drones without detection. I'm ultimately naive to capability/ capacity of drones but I thought they would be detectable if travelling long distances/ range in that quantity.
Jonny_Rondos_Disco_pants
Well-known member
sadgit
Well-known member
I came back from Kyiv a week ago and while there it was rather quiet, apart from the knob who crashed into my van. I wake up today to see Kyiv had more missile strikes today. Crazy how one week ago I was driving round that city at 2am without a care in the world. Well except worried about the curfew and army/police roadblocks. Again if anyone wants to help out, just message me.
Yes. Pretty much true. There was a leadership issue ... so they could not co-ordinate properly and stood down (according to one who knows).
Concrete Dreams
Well-known member
The BBC seem to be running rather negative news stories this week. Last night was about the numbers of Ukrainian war dead and today it is suggesting the drone attacks aren't always successful and Russia is closing the gap in this respect.
It all seems at odds with what we read here.
It all seems at odds with what we read here.
Well, undoubtedly there is bad stuff happening and Ukrainians are paying a price. It would be foolish to expect otherwise, but the reporter is only seeing one tiny bit of the story. He may also be being fed negative vibes for a reason. An obvious reason.
What you read here comes from someone with much more of a big picture understanding ... and probably much more background knowledge than the journalisyt can hope to have. Let alone access to intel.
More droning on
"Russia has made what might become their final mistake.
I have harped on about "In Russia only Moscow counts, in Moscow only Kremlin counts, in Kremlin only the Government counts, and the Government is Putin".
So has Konstanting and every other person knowing their way around Russia.
This has been true throughout history from the first Tzar via Stalin to today.
Notably this is why Stalin never left Moscow even when the German army was knocking on the door.
Because if you are "The Tzar" and leave the government will come ambling in your fotsteps, and then the Kremlin is no longer the Kremlin, and then Moscow is just a hollow core, and the residents would rise up resenting not being part of being the center of the Universe.
Especially this is true during a war that is moderately impopular in Moscow, this is why you only see propaganda clips with non-Muscovians and barely see anyone from Moscow fighting it.
First Putin left Kremlin and Moscow.
In reality he has barely been there for years, but previously he kept up the illusion by travelling in as and when needed.
Now he first fled to Valdai, and then onwards to Mount Yamantau to avoid the risk of drones, coups and assassins.
And with the Tzar gone the government has startled to amble off to drone secure places outside of the 1000km theoretical range of the Ukrainian drones.
So far it is mainly ministers and their staffs that quietly have moved, are moving, or planning to move, out into the great blue yonder of the Taiga...
With them gone departments will move to be handy to their masters, and the movement will continue as lower and lower bureucrats become tired of drones exploding around their ears.
This is a big mistake on the Russian side, you have a capital that is used to being "the middle of the universe", being suplanted by Tobolsk.
And without the government there, the control will diminish.
Boom...
Bakhmut
Here Ukraine is inching forward, now they have direct fire control of the roads in and out to the city and its surroundings.
This means that in a way the Russians are trapped there in the sense that it would be costly to withdraw.
Obviously Ukraine is not putting in a heap of resources here, so unless Russia start to pull out forces it will take a year or so to liberate the city.
But, it is tying down loads of Russians.
Vuhledar
Here Ukraine is taking control of backroads to the west and have generally increased the number of firing missions.
So far it is mainly taking advantage of troops that been moved out towards Tokmak, and to massage the remaining troops.
Staromlynivka
After a bit of rest and relaxation the Ukrainians are restarting the campaign in this area to take advantage of some units that have been pulled towards Tokmak.
So far the gains are small, but it follows the usual pattern of sting like a bee all over the place.
Another sign is the increase in firing missions to put pressure on the remaining units.
The wait here was mainly forced by running out of mine clearing rollers and charges, but now they have received more of it.
Remember that here they are in the ultra-mined area between the Zeroline and 1 Surovikinline.
Obviously both Vuhledar and Staromlynivka is increasing the pressure further on the Russians, because they must take the threat seriously at both places, and they know that they have pulled out dangerously many units from both places.
Drones
We now have the final tally.
Ukraine sent 180 drones in 3 waves into 8 regions hitting 25 different target locations.
The 5 confirmed Iljushins was not all, 1 SU-22M was totalled, and a couple of Mig-29s, plus a bunch of AN-8 planes.
In total we have 12 confirmed planes that are totalled.
Further radar sites, ammunition depots, government buildings, and barracks was hit.
But, the most important thing is that the factory producing GLONASS chips was hit, this will halt production of missiles and drones in short order.
It would take Russia at least a year to build a new factory or rebuild this one, if they could get die-cast machines somehow...
These are extremely specified and the world is keeping a very tight grip on these.
So... nope.
This is obviously not a future that will make the Russians happy.
Drones are all of a sudden the new "it", and Russia can't produce them in large numbers.
Dronetech
A year ago Ukraine claimed that they would be able to reach 1000km into Russia.
Everyone assumed they planned to do it with missiles, but when you need to hit hundreds of targets per week missiles are just to costly, especially since they would need to be of the ballistic type.
A missile with 1000km range is a million Euro a pop, and that is extremely cheap for those.
No way Ukraine could afford that in sufficient numbers, and it would also be an extreme strain on their limited production capacity
Instead they went down the drone route, and the world laughed.
1000km self propelled bombs was just seen as ludicruous since surely the mighty Russian air defence would pick them down like no tomorrow.
I did not laught, I built my first drone bomb when I was 12 years old together with 3 childhood friends.
Obviously it did not have the range, nor the precission, but it worked.
This self experienced building left me very confident that they could pull it off, especially since computer parts are way smaller and cheaper compared to what we used/scrounged together.
Next they said that they would do it in cardboard, borrowing technology from an Australian company.
They world bowled over in laughter.
But, what is cardbord in a cardbord box?
It is a composite fibre-material glued together in a honeycomb-like structure.
It is stiff and cheap to produce, that is why the world is packaged in cardboard.
If you then take advanced cardboard and glure it together with epoxi and coat it with epoxy, then you have a cheap sturdy composite material perfectly suited for a once-usage flying self-guided bomb.
It also has a very low radar profile.
As predicted the Ukrainians got the final laught.
On top of that they are using cheap ass Honda moped-motors.
These are perfect since they are cheap and reliable and can run for as many hours as you can pack in petrol.
But, once more the world laughed "hehe, moped motors..."
If you take a Honda motor and change out a couple of parts you get a quite powerful package going from 1.5Bhp to 25Bhp, perfect for a small drone.
Over time Ukraine have increased the range from 500km to now 700km, and I suspect that they will hit that 1000km range soon enough on the Beaver Model they are using now.
And there is absolutely nothing stopping them from later on building a somewhat larger one with even further range by scaling it up.
Now, what impresses me and that I did not expect them to solve was the problem with equipment nocking out their GPS-targeting.
The first Beavers ("Nice Beaver!" "Yes I stuffed it myself..." Sorry, I could not stop myself from referencing this movie) utilized a simple GPS-chip for the Arduino.
Problem is that Russia has a lot of equipment for disturbing GPS-signals and a lot of EMP-equipment.
The latter problem was fixed by coating the electronics package in leaf-gold.
Ukraine has a very large amount of people knowing how to guild things, so instead of guilding cathedrals they are now guilding electronics boxes en masse.
There's about 100USD of gold in each of those drones...
The GPS-signal problem was even easier to solve.
They changed out the GPS arduino chip to a combined GPS/GLONASS-chip for the Arduino.
Thing is that Russia has nothing to disturb the GLONASS system since they themselves are totally reliant on it.
If they somehow started to knock out the signal their own air defence missiles would just amble about aimlessly...
Oops...
I now promise to not yack about drones for a while... at least until Ukraine does some new model or improvement."
"Russia has made what might become their final mistake.
I have harped on about "In Russia only Moscow counts, in Moscow only Kremlin counts, in Kremlin only the Government counts, and the Government is Putin".
So has Konstanting and every other person knowing their way around Russia.
This has been true throughout history from the first Tzar via Stalin to today.
Notably this is why Stalin never left Moscow even when the German army was knocking on the door.
Because if you are "The Tzar" and leave the government will come ambling in your fotsteps, and then the Kremlin is no longer the Kremlin, and then Moscow is just a hollow core, and the residents would rise up resenting not being part of being the center of the Universe.
Especially this is true during a war that is moderately impopular in Moscow, this is why you only see propaganda clips with non-Muscovians and barely see anyone from Moscow fighting it.
First Putin left Kremlin and Moscow.
In reality he has barely been there for years, but previously he kept up the illusion by travelling in as and when needed.
Now he first fled to Valdai, and then onwards to Mount Yamantau to avoid the risk of drones, coups and assassins.
And with the Tzar gone the government has startled to amble off to drone secure places outside of the 1000km theoretical range of the Ukrainian drones.
So far it is mainly ministers and their staffs that quietly have moved, are moving, or planning to move, out into the great blue yonder of the Taiga...
With them gone departments will move to be handy to their masters, and the movement will continue as lower and lower bureucrats become tired of drones exploding around their ears.
This is a big mistake on the Russian side, you have a capital that is used to being "the middle of the universe", being suplanted by Tobolsk.
And without the government there, the control will diminish.
Boom...
Bakhmut
Here Ukraine is inching forward, now they have direct fire control of the roads in and out to the city and its surroundings.
This means that in a way the Russians are trapped there in the sense that it would be costly to withdraw.
Obviously Ukraine is not putting in a heap of resources here, so unless Russia start to pull out forces it will take a year or so to liberate the city.
But, it is tying down loads of Russians.
Vuhledar
Here Ukraine is taking control of backroads to the west and have generally increased the number of firing missions.
So far it is mainly taking advantage of troops that been moved out towards Tokmak, and to massage the remaining troops.
Staromlynivka
After a bit of rest and relaxation the Ukrainians are restarting the campaign in this area to take advantage of some units that have been pulled towards Tokmak.
So far the gains are small, but it follows the usual pattern of sting like a bee all over the place.
Another sign is the increase in firing missions to put pressure on the remaining units.
The wait here was mainly forced by running out of mine clearing rollers and charges, but now they have received more of it.
Remember that here they are in the ultra-mined area between the Zeroline and 1 Surovikinline.
Obviously both Vuhledar and Staromlynivka is increasing the pressure further on the Russians, because they must take the threat seriously at both places, and they know that they have pulled out dangerously many units from both places.
Drones
We now have the final tally.
Ukraine sent 180 drones in 3 waves into 8 regions hitting 25 different target locations.
The 5 confirmed Iljushins was not all, 1 SU-22M was totalled, and a couple of Mig-29s, plus a bunch of AN-8 planes.
In total we have 12 confirmed planes that are totalled.
Further radar sites, ammunition depots, government buildings, and barracks was hit.
But, the most important thing is that the factory producing GLONASS chips was hit, this will halt production of missiles and drones in short order.
It would take Russia at least a year to build a new factory or rebuild this one, if they could get die-cast machines somehow...
These are extremely specified and the world is keeping a very tight grip on these.
So... nope.
This is obviously not a future that will make the Russians happy.
Drones are all of a sudden the new "it", and Russia can't produce them in large numbers.
Dronetech
A year ago Ukraine claimed that they would be able to reach 1000km into Russia.
Everyone assumed they planned to do it with missiles, but when you need to hit hundreds of targets per week missiles are just to costly, especially since they would need to be of the ballistic type.
A missile with 1000km range is a million Euro a pop, and that is extremely cheap for those.
No way Ukraine could afford that in sufficient numbers, and it would also be an extreme strain on their limited production capacity
Instead they went down the drone route, and the world laughed.
1000km self propelled bombs was just seen as ludicruous since surely the mighty Russian air defence would pick them down like no tomorrow.
I did not laught, I built my first drone bomb when I was 12 years old together with 3 childhood friends.
Obviously it did not have the range, nor the precission, but it worked.
This self experienced building left me very confident that they could pull it off, especially since computer parts are way smaller and cheaper compared to what we used/scrounged together.
Next they said that they would do it in cardboard, borrowing technology from an Australian company.
They world bowled over in laughter.
But, what is cardbord in a cardbord box?
It is a composite fibre-material glued together in a honeycomb-like structure.
It is stiff and cheap to produce, that is why the world is packaged in cardboard.
If you then take advanced cardboard and glure it together with epoxi and coat it with epoxy, then you have a cheap sturdy composite material perfectly suited for a once-usage flying self-guided bomb.
It also has a very low radar profile.
As predicted the Ukrainians got the final laught.
On top of that they are using cheap ass Honda moped-motors.
These are perfect since they are cheap and reliable and can run for as many hours as you can pack in petrol.
But, once more the world laughed "hehe, moped motors..."
If you take a Honda motor and change out a couple of parts you get a quite powerful package going from 1.5Bhp to 25Bhp, perfect for a small drone.
Over time Ukraine have increased the range from 500km to now 700km, and I suspect that they will hit that 1000km range soon enough on the Beaver Model they are using now.
And there is absolutely nothing stopping them from later on building a somewhat larger one with even further range by scaling it up.
Now, what impresses me and that I did not expect them to solve was the problem with equipment nocking out their GPS-targeting.
The first Beavers ("Nice Beaver!" "Yes I stuffed it myself..." Sorry, I could not stop myself from referencing this movie) utilized a simple GPS-chip for the Arduino.
Problem is that Russia has a lot of equipment for disturbing GPS-signals and a lot of EMP-equipment.
The latter problem was fixed by coating the electronics package in leaf-gold.
Ukraine has a very large amount of people knowing how to guild things, so instead of guilding cathedrals they are now guilding electronics boxes en masse.
There's about 100USD of gold in each of those drones...
The GPS-signal problem was even easier to solve.
They changed out the GPS arduino chip to a combined GPS/GLONASS-chip for the Arduino.
Thing is that Russia has nothing to disturb the GLONASS system since they themselves are totally reliant on it.
If they somehow started to knock out the signal their own air defence missiles would just amble about aimlessly...
Oops...
I now promise to not yack about drones for a while... at least until Ukraine does some new model or improvement."
RedAsABeetroot
Well-known member
All of the above info about drones reminds me of the saying that necessity is the mother of invention.
Decent_Left
Well-known member
Really impressed with Sadgits volunteering driving to Ukraine and in response to the weird BBC news report from the normally reliable Somerville last night this mini documentary with 5 snippets from other volunteers in Ukraine is a bit uplifting about the support Ukraine is receiving from ordinary people at home and from around the world
It is a rather sad indictment of us as a species, that throughout history, most technological leaps are made in the quest to be better at killing each other. Mainly because, spending money on better ways to kill people gets more political weight than spending money trying to improve health, create art, improve the welfare of ordinary people etc.
Grumpy post .... an alternative view to that projected in our media.
"Frontlines
There is a divide inside of the Western Alliance upon how Ukraine should perform the war.
The US/UK is of the opinion that Ukraine should go "gungho" on a space and punch through rapidly.
Even to the point of sacrificing space in other areas if needed.
The Ukrainians prefer the hold what they have bled to retake, grind away until Russia is attrited enough, and then punch the living daylights out of them at a suitable spot.
Problem is that the US, and somewhat UK, are trying to force Ukraine to follow a desktop plan.
None of the generals have inspected the frontlines, and they just do not understand how mined the place is, and how hard the defences are.
Also, they do not get the scale of things, and how hard the Russians are willing to defend every single square meter.
Yes, Ukraine could punch through in a gungho attack, but it would be a bloodbath, so much so that I am not certain that Ukraine could perform offensive combat operations for a year after.
Problem is that these generals have NATO training and think in NATO resources.
Foremost of that is that they every single time think that they have air superiority and can bomb the living daylights out of the enemy.
Ukraine does not have air superiority, they do not have air dominance, and they will not have that for a year.
Going gungho without air cover is just insanity.
We instead have a century of planning for war and battles from the Ukrainian perspective, bigger enemy, and not being superior in anything.
Well, nowadays we have technological superiority, but still...
We never counted on air superiority, tank superiority, naval superiority... etcetera.
As we constantly wargame the Ukrainian war back home in Stockholm at HQ we always come to the Ukrainian solution being the safest and best to win longterm.
Let me take Kreminna as an example.
Ukraine lost soldiers taking the area in the Kharkiv offensive, if they are pushed back the loose more lives compared to defending, and then they would lose even more lives retaking the area.
Holding the area gives comparatively low loss rate.
So, the entire concept of losing ground there to concentrate on attacking down south is idiotic since soldiers are your most valued asset.
But why then are Ukraine pushing in many areas?
Couldn't they stop that and concentrate.
No, that would release additional forces down south that now are pinned.
And this is why Ukraine are pushing so slowly at these areas, because then they lose as few soldiers as possible contra how many soldiers they pin down.
And, it is not like Ukraine truly are allocating resources to these slow advances anyway.
No, grind, grind, grind, atrite, atrite, atrite, and then punch like hell, was always their best option.
I will even go so far that if this is the level of thinking among US/UK-generals, I fear what would happen if NATO ends up at war against China.
Now, UK will get a pass.
They have an admiral as their lead general and chief of the armed forces.
This is fine for the UK since they are mainly a navy state and not a landforce state, but what is ludicruous is that he is trying to instruct Ukrainian generals on how to perform the war, he is out on truly deep waters there.
In Ukraine he is a laughing stock now when they sit down for a rare beer in the Ukrainian MOD.
Problem is that these generals are quoted all the time in Western Media as the "saviours of the failed Ukrainian offensive".
And this is slowly pushing Ukraine to having to go ahead with wasting lives in an offensive gungho attack that will destroy their combat capabilities.
We and the Finns are cautioning the Ukrainians against this since we truly think they will win by following the Ukrainian battle plan, even if it takes time now it will shorten the war longterm considerably and assure the win.
Anyway, this needed to be said."
"Frontlines
There is a divide inside of the Western Alliance upon how Ukraine should perform the war.
The US/UK is of the opinion that Ukraine should go "gungho" on a space and punch through rapidly.
Even to the point of sacrificing space in other areas if needed.
The Ukrainians prefer the hold what they have bled to retake, grind away until Russia is attrited enough, and then punch the living daylights out of them at a suitable spot.
Problem is that the US, and somewhat UK, are trying to force Ukraine to follow a desktop plan.
None of the generals have inspected the frontlines, and they just do not understand how mined the place is, and how hard the defences are.
Also, they do not get the scale of things, and how hard the Russians are willing to defend every single square meter.
Yes, Ukraine could punch through in a gungho attack, but it would be a bloodbath, so much so that I am not certain that Ukraine could perform offensive combat operations for a year after.
Problem is that these generals have NATO training and think in NATO resources.
Foremost of that is that they every single time think that they have air superiority and can bomb the living daylights out of the enemy.
Ukraine does not have air superiority, they do not have air dominance, and they will not have that for a year.
Going gungho without air cover is just insanity.
We instead have a century of planning for war and battles from the Ukrainian perspective, bigger enemy, and not being superior in anything.
Well, nowadays we have technological superiority, but still...
We never counted on air superiority, tank superiority, naval superiority... etcetera.
As we constantly wargame the Ukrainian war back home in Stockholm at HQ we always come to the Ukrainian solution being the safest and best to win longterm.
Let me take Kreminna as an example.
Ukraine lost soldiers taking the area in the Kharkiv offensive, if they are pushed back the loose more lives compared to defending, and then they would lose even more lives retaking the area.
Holding the area gives comparatively low loss rate.
So, the entire concept of losing ground there to concentrate on attacking down south is idiotic since soldiers are your most valued asset.
But why then are Ukraine pushing in many areas?
Couldn't they stop that and concentrate.
No, that would release additional forces down south that now are pinned.
And this is why Ukraine are pushing so slowly at these areas, because then they lose as few soldiers as possible contra how many soldiers they pin down.
And, it is not like Ukraine truly are allocating resources to these slow advances anyway.
No, grind, grind, grind, atrite, atrite, atrite, and then punch like hell, was always their best option.
I will even go so far that if this is the level of thinking among US/UK-generals, I fear what would happen if NATO ends up at war against China.
Now, UK will get a pass.
They have an admiral as their lead general and chief of the armed forces.
This is fine for the UK since they are mainly a navy state and not a landforce state, but what is ludicruous is that he is trying to instruct Ukrainian generals on how to perform the war, he is out on truly deep waters there.
In Ukraine he is a laughing stock now when they sit down for a rare beer in the Ukrainian MOD.
Problem is that these generals are quoted all the time in Western Media as the "saviours of the failed Ukrainian offensive".
And this is slowly pushing Ukraine to having to go ahead with wasting lives in an offensive gungho attack that will destroy their combat capabilities.
We and the Finns are cautioning the Ukrainians against this since we truly think they will win by following the Ukrainian battle plan, even if it takes time now it will shorten the war longterm considerably and assure the win.
Anyway, this needed to be said."