[Werthead]

Two Russian Su-27s intercepted a US drone on the edge of Russian-claimed airspace south of Crimea. Apparently they tried to buzz the drone and even carried out a weird maneuver trying to dump fuel over it, but one of the pilots apparently lost control and crashed into it, damaging his Su-27 and sending the drone crashing into the sea.

The Americans seem to have chosen not to directly retaliate because of the sheer ineptness the Russian pilots showed during the incident. Also, the possibility this might be a cack-handed retaliation for the US directly flying a B-52 from the States to buzz the Russian border a few weeks back, flying right up to the limit of Russian airspace near St. Petersburg before paralleling the Kaliningrad border and returning home. The plane kept its transponder on at all times and identified itself to Russian air traffic control.

[Werthead]

Poland appears to have decided to transfer most of its 29 MiG-29s to Ukraine. Slovakia is apparently close to agreeing to do the same, with 11 aircraft available to transfer.

This may open the way to other operators. Bulgaria has 11 MiG-29s and Moldova has 6 reportedly in storage, but could provide spare parts. And obviously, once the taboo on sending jets at all is broken, then F-16s and other designs could follow at a later date.

[Abyss]

 Werthead, on 14 March 2023 - 06:33 PM, said:

Two Russian Su-27s intercepted a US drone on the edge of Russian-claimed airspace south of Crimea. Apparently they tried to buzz the drone and even carried out a weird maneuver trying to dump fuel over it, but one of the pilots apparently lost control and crashed into it, damaging his Su-27 and sending the drone crashing into the sea.
...

Would bet he was trying to do the inverted thing from TOP GUN but found out the hard way they had left the cap off the fuel tank.

[QuickTidal]

 Abyss, on 15 March 2023 - 04:49 AM, said:

 Werthead, on 14 March 2023 - 06:33 PM, said:

Two Russian Su-27s intercepted a US drone on the edge of Russian-claimed airspace south of Crimea. Apparently they tried to buzz the drone and even carried out a weird maneuver trying to dump fuel over it, but one of the pilots apparently lost control and crashed into it, damaging his Su-27 and sending the drone crashing into the sea.
...

Would bet he was trying to do the inverted thing from TOP GUN but found out the hard way they had left the cap off the fuel tank.

*pushes up nerd glasses* The fuel cap is in the nose...

[Mentalist]

UAF has started probing in the S, between Tokmak and Polohy for the past few days. The weather in Zaporizhya Oblast' is quite dry, and unlike here in Canadaland, the spring is in full swing there, so expecting some early dry soil.


Poland and Slovakia have (finally) committed to hand over a bunch of MiG 29s to Ukraine, so that should boost the air support for the upcoming offensive.

Although the orcs keep pushing around Bakhmut, and are trying to pincer Avdiyivka the same way, the overall intensity and number of assaults is somewhat dying down. Which is why, I guess, there's a new surge of "requests to come to milcoms to clarify paperwork" across Russia- hinting at attempts to mobilize additional meat.

Xi gonna be in Moscow March 20-22nd. that could be the defining point.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 17 March 2023 - 06:43 PM

[Macros]

Wagner have now put out a 15 million hit on some Italian minister??

[Werthead]

The Russians are "upset" that Britain is planning to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium shells, almost like they're not in favour of leaving hazardous materials around an area that might hurt innocent people. And depleted uranium is far, far less dangerous than novichok or polonium, thank you very much.

What's more interesting is the reason we're sending them is probably because we have an absolute ton of the munitions that we'll probably not need in the near future (even our home secretary hasn't worked out how to put tanks on jetskis to patrol the Channel, yet), whilst other types of ammo and shells are probably in shorter supply than is ideal. Given that Russia is not far off dragging T-34s out of service to send into battle with (by modern standards) paper-thin armour, it's certainly not for essential use by the Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, looks like a major Ukrainian UAV attack on the Dzhankoy Airbase in Crimea, and another attack which destroyed a load of Kalibr cruise missiles in transit to the Black Sea Fleet on a train.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 21 March 2023 - 10:48 PM

[Mentalist]

 Werthead, on 21 March 2023 - 10:44 PM, said:

The Russians are "upset" that Britain is planning to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium shells, almost like they're not in favour of leaving hazardous materials around an area that might hurt innocent people. And depleted uranium is far, far less dangerous than novichok or polonium, thank you very much.

What's more interesting is the reason we're sending them is probably because we have an absolute ton of the munitions that we'll probably not need in the near future (even our home secretary hasn't worked out how to put tanks on jetskis to patrol the Channel, yet), whilst other types of ammo and shells are probably in shorter supply than is ideal. Given that Russia is not far off dragging T-34s out of service to send into battle with (by modern standards) paper-thin armour, it's certainly not for essential use by the Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, looks like a major Ukrainian UAV attack on the Dzhankoy Airbase in Crimea, and another attack which destroyed a load of Kalibr cruise missiles in transit to the Black Sea Fleet on a train.

Dzhankoy railway hub was the target. OC "South" is claiming the railway's out of commission now.

Some explosions in Sevastopol today. The orcs claim they intercepted 3 sea drones successfully. There's some footage of explosions, but unclear what it was.

Meanwhile, footage from Russia of a train carrying about 30 T-55/T-54 tanks westward. So the fact they seem to be out of refurbished T-62s is somewhat encouraging.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 22 March 2023 - 04:54 PM

[Abyss]

 QuickTidal, on 15 March 2023 - 12:54 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 15 March 2023 - 04:49 AM, said:

 Werthead, on 14 March 2023 - 06:33 PM, said:

Two Russian Su-27s intercepted a US drone on the edge of Russian-claimed airspace south of Crimea. Apparently they tried to buzz the drone and even carried out a weird maneuver trying to dump fuel over it, but one of the pilots apparently lost control and crashed into it, damaging his Su-27 and sending the drone crashing into the sea.
...

Would bet he was trying to do the inverted thing from TOP GUN but found out the hard way they had left the cap off the fuel tank.

*pushes up nerd glasses* The fuel cap is in the nose...

This in no way disproves my theory.

[Werthead]

In more WTFery, Roscosmos has begun constructing a new space launch facility in eastern Siberia to replace the Baikonur Spacedrome in Kazakhstan, reportedly because Putin is irritated at Kazakhstan's annual $100 million fee to use the facility. Roscosmos has started moving their stuff from Baikonur to the new facility, which is fine, but then some of their workers from a subsidiary decided it would be a splendid idea to start tearing up infrastructure belonging to the Kazakh government from the area and ship it out as well (i.e., stealing it). The Kazakh government said fuck that noise and has seized the assets from the subsidiary and effectively nationalised it.

Medvedev has said this is apparently further evidence that the Kazakh government is about to start ethnic cleansing of the Russian-speaking minority in the border area (even for him, a bit of a stretch) and urged a special military operation to resolve the problem (presumably using forces conjured out of the ether).

If the situation isn't resolved, then Roscosmos might not be able to use the Baikonur facility any more, which means no more Russian space programme launches until 2025 when the Siberia facility is supposed to come online (but probably won't), and no ability to test the Soyuz-5 (which is supposed to compete with the Falcon 9). I suspect Putin will be on the phone for a quasi-apology of sorts to try to resolve the situation shortly.

And yes, deploying T-55s against Javelins and depleted-uranium rounds fired from Challengers is moronically stupid. Ukraine's current IFVs, not to mention the incoming Bradleys, will be able to knock them out pretty easily.

[Werthead]

Russia appears to be deploying 1940s-era Katyusha rocket systems to Ukraine. I'm assuming they got them out of museums.

[Mentalist]

Turkish Parliamnet voted for Finland's ascension to NATO.

The orcs' NATO border just more than doubled.

[Werthead]

The details are unclear, but a prominent Russian military blogger was blown up in a cafe in St. Petersburg. He was the only fatality but 25 people were injured.

Unclear who carried out the bombing, but he had significant enemies amongst the surprisingly-robust military blogger crowd, plus there's increasingly active anti-government groups who seem happy to take out supporters of the regime. There doesn't seem to be any serious consideration that it was a Ukrainian intelligence op (I'd imagine they'd target someone at least vaguely important).

[Mentalist]

 Werthead, on 02 April 2023 - 08:46 PM, said:

The details are unclear, but a prominent Russian military blogger was blown up in a cafe in St. Petersburg. He was the only fatality but 25 people were injured.

Unclear who carried out the bombing, but he had significant enemies amongst the surprisingly-robust military blogger crowd, plus there's increasingly active anti-government groups who seem happy to take out supporters of the regime. There doesn't seem to be any serious consideration that it was a Ukrainian intelligence op (I'd imagine they'd target someone at least vaguely important).

A bank robber from Donbas who joined the "People's Militia" when he was released from prison by the "Russian World" in 2014.

Also, the lovely gentleman who recorded his euphoria from Kremlin on Sept 30th when Putler "annexed" the 4 Ukrainian Oblast's he did not fully control:

"We will kill who we want, we will take what we want, everything will be as we like it"

Today he was presenting his new book to the "Discussion Club "Cyber Z Front" in a cafe owned by Prigozhin, the head of Wagner. Reportedly, Prigozhin was supposed to show up, but since he's claiming he's taking the ruins of the Bakhmut City Council building, that seems unlikely.

The orcs will absolutely try to pin this on Ukraine. However, this could be a turf war between Prigozhin and the clan that's behind Petersbur's governor Belov (whom Prigozhin accused of treason and tried to have removed). Or an FSB hit to discredit Prigozhin (it's his place, so his inability to provide security tosses shade at him).

Also also, Girkin and co founded the "Angry Patriots' Club" yesterday, to rally the turbo-nationalists to "react to any possible pro-defeatist liberal coup". Since Tatarsky and Girkin have been on the outs since the latters original stint as "Commnader in chief of the forces of DNR" back in 2014, it could be the APC (which is obviously backed by someone high up in the security apparatus) making a statement.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

fwiw:

Quote

[The blogger] died in the blast as he gave a talk at the Street Food Bar #1 Cafe. According to [...] Russian state media, [he ...] had been handed a statue as a gift that may have contained the explosive device. The figurine was reportedly designed to look like [him].

[...] A video of [him] opening the figurine/statue gift that allegedly blew up & killed him today. It's "cool," "golden," he says.

Vladlen Tatarsky: Suspect Daria Trepova Arrested in St. Petersburg Bombing

... would that work on Trump?

Quote

[...] arrest of Daria Trepova in connection with the attack. [...] Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee says it has established that the bombing was planned by "Ukrainian special services" and involved people "collaborating with the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation."

Yeah right....

Quote

Trepova had previously taken part in an anti-war rally [...] and had been arrested for 10 days as a result.

So she's clearly guilty. Or not:

Quote

Sources cited by the outlet claimed investigators haven't ruled out the possibility that Trepova [...] "might not have guessed that the figurine contained an explosive device."

lol... If she did give him the statue, why would an anti-war protestor give him a present? Might have thought it contained something else?...

Quote

"I believe my wife was framed," [...] "I'm pretty sure she would never have been able to do something like that on her own.

Maybe he meant 'couldn't bring herself to', not 'I know my wife, and she's way too dumb to do anything like this?'

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 03 April 2023 - 12:20 PM

[Werthead]

There's been a data leak of US intelligence assessments of the war. They are quite interesting, although clearly the security breach is concerning. The good news is that about 90% of it is stuff that we already knew, or had guessed. The Ukrainians have also not given a lot of information to the US, leaving them in the dark on precise casualty figures and where exactly future offensives will be launched.

The main takeaways:

• The US assesses total Russian casualties in excess of 223,000, which tallies with Ukrainian estimates (as noted before, Ukrainian estimates are based on Russian intercepts). However, the US is only prepared to estimated 71,000 Russian KIA, although on low confidence (Ukrainian estimates, based on those same intercepts, are around 160,000-170,000).
  
• Ukrainian casualties are estimated at around 130,000, combined military and civilian casualties, which tallies with previous estimates. Ukrainian military dead are estimated at 17,000, which feels pretty low (other estimates are between 30,000 and 50,000). It's likely the battle for Bakhmut, which may turn out to be the bloodiest battle so far for both sides, was not factored into these figures as they seem to come from several weeks ago.
  
• A rather shitty photoshop is doing the rounds which flips the figures to make the Ukrainian losses seem much heavier than the Russians. However, the original, unaltered version was doing the rounds earlier.

The US has a rather advanced mapping and timeline system about when and where the mud clears in eastern Ukraine based on the weather and typical conditions.

There's also been some heavy research focused on the city of Kostroma, home to the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment. The BBC has confirmed that the unit took 39 fatalities in March and April 2022, 62 by late July and 94 by last month. They did this with on-the-ground reporting, visiting the military cemetery and combing Russian social media. They also note this only applies to people from the city itself; a large proportion are from the surrounding countryside and the unit has been reconstituted several times with conscripts from all over Russia. Taking that into account, the unit may have lost as many as 500 troops killed and injured enough to not be able to return to duty: the unit originally constituted 1,200 troops but based on various records, around 1,700 names are currently listed as having gone through the rolls, suggesting it has had to recruit 500 new troops to get back up to strength. Other sources suggest that only 300-400 troops from the original 1,200 remain, with some soldiers leaving service through various legal means as well as being killed or injured.

The unit seems to have been hammered by moving between Izyum, Kherson, Donbas and most recently Kreminna. It's also lost most of its vehicles, and recent photos suggest it only has 3 operational BMD armoured vehicles.

[Cause]

 Werthead, on 09 April 2023 - 10:50 PM, said:

There's been a data leak of US intelligence assessments of the war. They are quite interesting, although clearly the security breach is concerning. The good news is that about 90% of it is stuff that we already knew, or had guessed. The Ukrainians have also not given a lot of information to the US, leaving them in the dark on precise casualty figures and where exactly future offensives will be launched.

The main takeaways:

• The US assesses total Russian casualties in excess of 223,000, which tallies with Ukrainian estimates (as noted before, Ukrainian estimates are based on Russian intercepts). However, the US is only prepared to estimated 71,000 Russian KIA, although on low confidence (Ukrainian estimates, based on those same intercepts, are around 160,000-170,000).
  
• Ukrainian casualties are estimated at around 130,000, combined military and civilian casualties, which tallies with previous estimates. Ukrainian military dead are estimated at 17,000, which feels pretty low (other estimates are between 30,000 and 50,000). It's likely the battle for Bakhmut, which may turn out to be the bloodiest battle so far for both sides, was not factored into these figures as they seem to come from several weeks ago.
  
• A rather shitty photoshop is doing the rounds which flips the figures to make the Ukrainian losses seem much heavier than the Russians. However, the original, unaltered version was doing the rounds earlier.

The US has a rather advanced mapping and timeline system about when and where the mud clears in eastern Ukraine based on the weather and typical conditions.

There's also been some heavy research focused on the city of Kostroma, home to the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment. The BBC has confirmed that the unit took 39 fatalities in March and April 2022, 62 by late July and 94 by last month. They did this with on-the-ground reporting, visiting the military cemetery and combing Russian social media. They also note this only applies to people from the city itself; a large proportion are from the surrounding countryside and the unit has been reconstituted several times with conscripts from all over Russia. Taking that into account, the unit may have lost as many as 500 troops killed and injured enough to not be able to return to duty: the unit originally constituted 1,200 troops but based on various records, around 1,700 names are currently listed as having gone through the rolls, suggesting it has had to recruit 500 new troops to get back up to strength. Other sources suggest that only 300-400 troops from the original 1,200 remain, with some soldiers leaving service through various legal means as well as being killed or injured.

The unit seems to have been hammered by moving between Izyum, Kherson, Donbas and most recently Kreminna. It's also lost most of its vehicles, and recent photos suggest it only has 3 operational BMD armoured vehicles.

I find these casualty reports interesting for a number of reasons, (1) Russia is losing a ton of man power and material which to me still seems to be for little or no real gain. Also what's (2) interesting is that Putin and the russian government seem to be able to hide these figures sufficiently at home and use methods like penal recruitment and a draft to keep up the numbers. The united states lost 4000 or so troops in Iraq and 2000 troops in Afghanistan according to my quick google search and the US homefront lost their minds in disbelief at the 'high' casulaties. What does this potentially mean for the USA if it was ever dragged into a war which isnt so asymetric in power.

[Macros]

I don't think the US would ever drop them selves into a boots on the ground situation where they weren't confident of superiority. And not deluded Russian version of assumed superiority.

As far as I can see all Putin is doing is worsening the Russian population collapse

[Macros]

Sorry.
Ever again after Vietnam

[Cause]

 Macros, on 10 April 2023 - 02:42 PM, said:

I don't think the US would ever drop them selves into a boots on the ground situation where they weren't confident of superiority. And not deluded Russian version of assumed superiority.

As far as I can see all Putin is doing is worsening the Russian population collapse

Agreed that’s what they would like but if that’s true, and if that’s other countries perception of the USS as well, what happens when it comes down to bluff or die over things like North Korea or Taiwan.

I don’t think anyone really wants a full blown conflict over Taiwan no matter what China says, they would lose as much but how would the US react to a destroyer or even an aircraft carrier actually being sunk with all hands? 1000 dead in 1 day?

Then again these things are effected by the situation at the time. I doubt many Ukrainians realized how far they were willing to go until the choice was forced on them.