Ye-eee--s, I got (most) of that. From now on I will keep my transponder close to my thumb reading your explanations. The adrenaline rush has begun to subside, time for a palate cleanse (Jeff Tiedrich works for me)?
Maybe questions to glide bombs. Cannot the by shotdown by gepards? yes i know short range but on some strategic point. Or maybe with something more modern as Slinger which can detect target just with optic with radar off to avoid detection.
Has any body tried to shotdown artilelery shells with machine gun guided by computer? Trajectory can be now easy computed and ammo ins machine gun should be cheaper as shell. But no knowledge what happend if machine gun hit glide bomb or shell.
I'm guessing innovations like that run into the same problems as described in the article with rockets.
Furthermore, if you shoot down something like that too close to it's target, debris from the bomb in question is still going to cause a lot of damage, I imagine.
Debrys can be dangerous and i have no clue if it is better to detonate glide bombs 200m before target in the air or 50m in the ground.
To develop and produced such things is comlicated and takes time, but that's why i mention australian slinger which should have all these technlogies, is already in UA and maybe with some software update ..
Imagine if you put 5 such things in Chasiv Jar and they shotdown most of shells and glide bombs.. but i don;t know if it is technically possible to shotdown them and also debris can be problem but this will be a next layer of air defence in the future, cheap for using it( expensive for buing because you will need thousands of such system).
As a non-expert, I would think it's possible but pretty difficult. The issue is probably not even with debris - the issue is that you'll have a hard time making debris out of it.
First of all, these bombs are relatively small. You might be able to find and track them with a powerful radar in the limited timespan you have before impact, but then your powerful radar becomes a target itself (note how easy they are to locate when turned on). Assuming you have managed to calculate its arc, you can try to take a shot, but again, in order to down it with an autocannon, you would need to hit precisely the _wings_, and that when it's still reasonably far away, most probably outside your cannon's range. Hitting it when already too close, or hitting just the bomb itself is akin to hitting a ballistic missile in its terminal phase - you might push it a little off target, but it makes such a huge blast, it will still pulverize what it was intended for. In order to make it explode in the air, you would need a heavy kinetic interceptor, which is expensive special equipment and - again - needs to be absolutely accurate.
If you were still able to pull it off, great! You only need to do it like a hundred times every day.
Slinger should be able to detect them just with normal or infra red camera and image recognition and glide bombs are not as small.
Hitting and destroying wings is hard and this is no way i think.
But maybe some explosive bullet can let it detonate in the air. These bombs are not the fastest so if you detect it 4km away from target and maybe hit it 1km before the bomb should be still at least 100m over the earth. Of cource it must be all done by computer and then repeating is no problem. You need to have very accuracy cannon. I think that at least detection in good weather should be not a technical problem. Destroying yes, because i am not sure if explosive bullet can work and everything else is too expensive and cannot be produce in enough amounts.
I'm not sure about their heat signature. Surely they ought to have some even without an engine, but using it for an accurate aim? And a visual camera is easy to overcome - drop the thing at night.
All in all, you're probably right that some highly advanced gizmo should offer at least limited protection from them - though we still don't know what to use to destroy them reliably in the air - but then you'd need to mass-produce these to account for the sheer number of bombs being lobbed at Ukraine. And note that if they start getting shot down, the Russians can still start throwing bigger batches of them at the same time to overcome the defensive gizmo, resulting in less frequent but even deadlier strikes.
yes there are many problems with detection and destruction and mass production, but also only detection can save many lifes, If you know 15 seconds before hit that you should go to trench and not stay in open area... and yes war is always action and reaction but now is ball on UA side.
Slinger is stated to be able to engage drones beyond 800m.
The 152mm howitzer has a MV of over 800m/s. Even if the velocity had dropped below 400mps at range the Slinger would have less than 1-2 seconds to engage it (although its radar has a range of 1.2km for drones not sure how that translates for an artillery shell). You are then hitting a 45+kg shell with a 230gm proximity fragmentation round. Not sure how effective the shrapnel from that will be at setting off the fuse for a 152mm HE round. Presuming it is contact fused rather than base.
Drones flies low, so it is harder to detect them as shell which is comming from skies. Size can be comparable. Destruction with normal bullet probably not, but some special explosive or anti armour. But maybe if not for shell then for grad rockets or something bigger.
Oh, come on. Аrtom-Luch is an old soviet corporation, ineffective, unwieldy, used to intriguing against other similar corporations and fighting for budget money. And in Ukraine, most of the old corporations are the same. They received large sums of money during independence and created almost nothing.
I see. And that's then the reason to do nothing about their (quote) ineffective, unwieldy, intriguing (unquote) management - and that for years, and especially since the all-out invasion?
Thank's for this piece of work. I'm keen to add my 5 cents.
Let me first clear a mix up which is very common. A primary radar contact is the depicted return of a target illuminated by a primary radar system, while the secondary radar return is the depiction on the radar scope of the digital information provided by the IFF system to a secondary radar system. Civil ATC is basically using only secondary radar information, while the military still uses both systems. The reason is obvious, secondary radar informations depends on the aircraft answering the identification request by secondary radars, the signal can be recorded by EW equipment . And if there is no own aircraft in the respective area , it must be hostile irrespective wether the IFF code itself can be identified or not.
That is the neat thing of a functioning IADS, where all gathered information in a designated airspace is identified, tracked and communicated with secure link to all ground and airborne assets.
A primary radar return can be identified and tracked by such a system by many means, all safe and without the use of IFF. Once a flight is planned the IADS system has to get the info about the point of departure, estimated time of departure, number of aircraft and the planned mission / target area. Based on the air and ground situation this flight gets assigned a safe deconflicted vector and altitude which have to be followed.
Upon takeoff the control tower forwards the information to IADS and the aircraft can be identified upon departure by primary radar alone.
My point is, IFF is useless and dangerous to use if unfriendly things are around you which strive to find and identify and finally shoot at you.
For me in my humble opinion the unknown black box is the capacity and ability of the IADS system, in a saturated situation the ability to identify and keep track of many targets may lead to disaster. Would I switch on my IFF in such a situation? No, as long as the bad guys are ready to squeeze the trigger. Especially over own ground a pilot has to rely on the system, that he is positive identified as friendly until somebody tells him otherwise by a call like "contact lost", and thus his radar return would be marked as " unknown". The controller would initiate an identification process, which could be a simple command to maneuver the aircraft to an new assigned heading/ altitude or as last resort to use the IFF.
Back to the case in hand, no General gets fired when a pilot or an operator of a Patriot makes a silly though deadly and expensive mistake, but he needs to get fired when the failure is to be found in the system and its setup. Neither the pilot nor the operator of an air defence system operates on their own, except in a kind of self defence mode when under direct attack. Both should have had a clear picture of friend and foe. The pilot had to rely on the system, that he was identified as friendly. He is not outside there flying alone and searching for targets and engaging them on own will, especially above own territory with many different air defence systems engaging as well he will be under close control of a ground or air based control station which assigns the targets and clear him to engage. He could have done nothing to avoid getting shot down by one of the most capable own missiles.
Same goes for the operator of a patriot system, it will not operate in autonomous mode and shoot at will at unidentified aircraft, except if under attack for self defence. If it is true that the F16 was hunting shaheds, the situation gets even more weird. Shooting with patriots on shaheds is hopefully not happening, waste of money and resources.
Lastly, we speculate a lot and know not enough, but this General got fired for a reason, a grave hopefully temporary misconception of the IADS system setup.
Thanks for additional insights. Always very welcome - especially when one is bringing it to the point as skillfully as you do.
I'll come back with some more explanations on how IADS' work (or used to work) through the history: think, alone on basis of this, one can deduct a lot about the Ukrainian IADS, too.
That with the nonfailing friend or foe system reminds me always back to my conscript times serving with mobile radar unit, where on the first training we got a call via radio to switch the damn thing off as the Mistrals couldn't log onto the planes and firing units couldn't train...
Hello and thank you for another of very interesting reports! Few days ago I was thinking about why these UMPK's aren't jammed like orks do with western GPS based weapons? Is it that jammers are not available as other necessary means? Or is it that e.g. orks are using GLONASS which is harder to jam / spoof? Or perhaps, the jamming / spoofing wouldn't be of much help as the deviation caused will be insufficient to avoid damage of intended target due to sheer mass of the explosion?
Thanks again and looking forward for next articles.
The ridiculous thing is that this Kometa is developed by an originally Ukrainian team that was bought out by the Russians some years before the war. They could not get any funding in Ukraine.
Thank you for reminding me the Kometa EW. Completely forgot on that article while writing my comment. Nah, that's pitty.
However, got another idea - theoretically, if there will be Kometa-M for example in GLSDB or Excalibur rounds, would it be easy for orcs to overcome it? I mean as they got the know how, it could be easy for them...but they are orcs and this could be nice irony to send them back their own "medicine" with some extra explosives.
There's a market for captured Kometas and quite a few have been used already in the long-range drones hitting Russia.
There are quite a few CRPA antenna manufacturers, but they all are quite pricey. And also sometimes things work as advertised sometimes not, for known reasons and unknown and noone wants to share what they know, so the general public has to accept the scraps they are given, which is often also intentionally false. So here we are.
Nice that these Kometas are getting back to their owners with some presents!
Some time ago, while daydreaming in theoretical spheres about this war, I've wondered what's the reason for "collective west" not working with UA on improving their EW capabilities, so they can surpass orcs. Maybe this is happening under secrecy, but considering the approach of "collective west" - I'm afraid that there's no such program or just at some very very limited level. Any imfo in this regards please?
If any such cooperation exists people who take part in it aren't talking, which is good. But I would guess there isn't enough trust on such sensitive matters for fruitful cooperation. Everyone working on advanced EW gear generally keep it to themselves. There's a lot of duplicated efforts, overpromising and therefore potential users, if they are smart, are distrustful (unless they are getting a cut, sigh).
On the other hand this is one area where "one weird trick" sometimes works and you are golden as long as you can keep the secret. But then how do you implement it?
They fly high and for a long time. Any short-range EW will not have much effect, while a long-range EW is costly and vulnerable to enemy artillery and drones.
I don't think they are maneuverable enough to deviate from a target on a hundred meters track. Probably the Russians jam GPS at large. However, I don't have the information.
Glsdb is used for accuracy. Missing 50m is big problem. Glide bombs are used for destruction and if they destroy one or another building is not as important
Superb analysis. Why is this depth of understanding otherwise impossible to find in open sources?
But one thing puzzles me -- why all the contortions to cover this up? Air defense of all nations has been shooting down friendly planes since air defense ever existed. Mankind has not yet invented either the device nor the procedure to eliminate the risk of aerial friendly fire accidents. The Russian have shot down even their own AWACS (FFS!), and multiple front line fighters of their own, and immediately admitted it. Adults understand that, as you said, sh*t happens in the thick of battle.
Are the Ukrainians unhealthily obsessed with PR? And can that be the explanation of the mysterious military purpose of the Kursk operation? After nearly a month, I'm starting to give up hoping that some brilliant plan behind it will be revealed.
Russians have a different Propaganda line and they didn't shoot their A-50 down, that were Ukrainians. They are following the narrative, that Ukraine is a completly unable belligerent.
Ukrainian military in this respect is more Soviet. Don't admit what you can plausibly deny or cover up. No failure, no reason to fire you. That is comparable to how the Russians act regarding their corruption and I haven't heard anyone Russian admitting the Vuhledar slaughterhouse or the fundamental failure of intelligence before the war.
I think this is a good analysis. As to who shot down the two A-50's, the Russians admitted that one was shot down by the Ukrainians (by an S-200, apparently), and I think they admitted that the second was friendly fire. I'm not sure why they would admit that if it weren't true, but maybe Tom, who's an expert on this, has better info.
Friendly fire has indeed existed since the first rock accidentally dropped on an archaic human head instead of the archaic elephant it was meant for, but hitting a long-awaited, limited-availability, high-profile plane and killing a similarly high-profile pilot still looks extraordinarily bad. I can understand if Oleshchuk was terrified to be associated with it, and Ukraine undoubtedly still retains a lot of the hush-up culture of the Soviet Union anyway. I don't think the Russians are any better - they tend to claim friendly fire only if the alternative would look even worse.
On the other hand, Ukraine is objectively dependent on good PR. They get one more voice from the West calling for them to negotiate with (i.e. surrender before) Russia each day when they can't report some success. That's not new or unique either, Washington himself was losing support rapidly as the population was losing faith that he can win his New Jersey campaign - so he pulled off a bold PR stunt at Trenton that turned out highly successful, lifted the morale all around, and suddenly he would get replacement personnel for his army again.
We do know that Ukrainians are feeling better after the Kursk attack. That's a very important military purpose.
First of all, these obsolete 30 year old F-16's are not "limited availability" -- there are thousands of them in the process of being mustered out of multiple air forces. Why is it a "bad look" to lose one of them vs. losing dozens of Abrams and Leopard tanks? But especially vs. losing Western AD systems which really are "limited availability". You lose equipment in war, especially a big attritional one like this. Objectively, losing an F-16 is not a big deal.
If Kursk was really a PR stunt after, taking 5 or 6 crack brigades out of the defense line at the worst possible moment, the Ukrainians are doomed. The feel good vibe from something like that is transitory; the collapse of Donbas defenses and loss of the rest of Donbas is forever. I can't believe they would be that stupid. I'm still waiting for the brilliant plan to emerge. It can't be this.
It’s not the F-16… it’s the pilot. Same in BoB, there wasn’t actually a serious shortage of Spurs & Hurricanes, but trained pilots to fly them well, yes there was until the Commonwealth Training Programme really got going
F-16s may be abundant in general, but Ukrainian F-16s are few in numbers (as of now), especially when we consider how many of them they can pilot, as already mentioned by the previous reply. There's a lot of hype around them. I'm not saying it's logical, but it's still the case.
As for the Kursk front, it was a multifold PR stunt at least, showing their allies that they retain strength and Putin is just bluffing with his nukes. They also captured a shitload of equipment and tradeable prisoners. Whether it was worth it still remains to be seen - we should bear in mind that, unlike it seems from the news, Pokrovsk is not on the brink of falling, and if it does, the Kramatorsk area is still intact. There's a long, bloody way for the Russians to go until the Donbass is "lost".
Pilots can and do sometimes make tragic mistakes. Truly professional militaries seek to investigate, determine the cause and endeavour to avoid it happening again.
Thanks Tom, I learned so tonight and my brain engaged with the possibilities of what went on with the unfortunate F16 pilot, kind of have my doubts we'll ever learn what really went on
Perhaps this explains the long slow arrival of F16s. If seiges of incoming missiles elicit a shoot-everything-flying response, then it isn't safe to send up planes of any kind. Don't be a target of own defense. It goes to using F16s in different ways. It's a two strategies at once failing to have ground to air defense targetting same air to air defense. I would have thought this would be worked out beforehand. I think of the pilots as much as the plane. It will happen again if this formula isn't thought of. I'd look to F16s not as last resorts but as stealth changers of dynamics. At times of ordinary warfare, suddenly an F16. With a secure path back
Thanks for the detail Tom. With so much room for human error, I’m kind of amazed FF incidents don’t happen far more often.
Is there something unique about how the F16 might have been operating, or even just how it appeared on radar, that might have seemed anomalous enough to a SAM operator to cause the FF? I assume they are used to seeing their own planes on radar, and also how they tend to fly sorties, but maybe the f16 just “looked” different enough in some way? The pilots went through a ton of training because f16s are “used differently” after all.
Thanks for this Q&A seeing reports about Ukraine receiving JASSM cruise missiles and really wondering why not more ATACMS instead considering the speed it would work well with targeting SAM systems compared with JASSMs that fly tad below mach 1. Otherwise the more weapons the merrier but I think there needs to be a focus on ballistic missiles whether ground or air launched.
Ye-eee--s, I got (most) of that. From now on I will keep my transponder close to my thumb reading your explanations. The adrenaline rush has begun to subside, time for a palate cleanse (Jeff Tiedrich works for me)?
Big thanks Tom for interesant infos.
Maybe questions to glide bombs. Cannot the by shotdown by gepards? yes i know short range but on some strategic point. Or maybe with something more modern as Slinger which can detect target just with optic with radar off to avoid detection.
Has any body tried to shotdown artilelery shells with machine gun guided by computer? Trajectory can be now easy computed and ammo ins machine gun should be cheaper as shell. But no knowledge what happend if machine gun hit glide bomb or shell.
I'm guessing innovations like that run into the same problems as described in the article with rockets.
Furthermore, if you shoot down something like that too close to it's target, debris from the bomb in question is still going to cause a lot of damage, I imagine.
Debrys can be dangerous and i have no clue if it is better to detonate glide bombs 200m before target in the air or 50m in the ground.
To develop and produced such things is comlicated and takes time, but that's why i mention australian slinger which should have all these technlogies, is already in UA and maybe with some software update ..
Imagine if you put 5 such things in Chasiv Jar and they shotdown most of shells and glide bombs.. but i don;t know if it is technically possible to shotdown them and also debris can be problem but this will be a next layer of air defence in the future, cheap for using it( expensive for buing because you will need thousands of such system).
As a non-expert, I would think it's possible but pretty difficult. The issue is probably not even with debris - the issue is that you'll have a hard time making debris out of it.
First of all, these bombs are relatively small. You might be able to find and track them with a powerful radar in the limited timespan you have before impact, but then your powerful radar becomes a target itself (note how easy they are to locate when turned on). Assuming you have managed to calculate its arc, you can try to take a shot, but again, in order to down it with an autocannon, you would need to hit precisely the _wings_, and that when it's still reasonably far away, most probably outside your cannon's range. Hitting it when already too close, or hitting just the bomb itself is akin to hitting a ballistic missile in its terminal phase - you might push it a little off target, but it makes such a huge blast, it will still pulverize what it was intended for. In order to make it explode in the air, you would need a heavy kinetic interceptor, which is expensive special equipment and - again - needs to be absolutely accurate.
If you were still able to pull it off, great! You only need to do it like a hundred times every day.
Slinger should be able to detect them just with normal or infra red camera and image recognition and glide bombs are not as small.
Hitting and destroying wings is hard and this is no way i think.
But maybe some explosive bullet can let it detonate in the air. These bombs are not the fastest so if you detect it 4km away from target and maybe hit it 1km before the bomb should be still at least 100m over the earth. Of cource it must be all done by computer and then repeating is no problem. You need to have very accuracy cannon. I think that at least detection in good weather should be not a technical problem. Destroying yes, because i am not sure if explosive bullet can work and everything else is too expensive and cannot be produce in enough amounts.
I'm not sure about their heat signature. Surely they ought to have some even without an engine, but using it for an accurate aim? And a visual camera is easy to overcome - drop the thing at night.
All in all, you're probably right that some highly advanced gizmo should offer at least limited protection from them - though we still don't know what to use to destroy them reliably in the air - but then you'd need to mass-produce these to account for the sheer number of bombs being lobbed at Ukraine. And note that if they start getting shot down, the Russians can still start throwing bigger batches of them at the same time to overcome the defensive gizmo, resulting in less frequent but even deadlier strikes.
yes there are many problems with detection and destruction and mass production, but also only detection can save many lifes, If you know 15 seconds before hit that you should go to trench and not stay in open area... and yes war is always action and reaction but now is ball on UA side.
Slinger is stated to be able to engage drones beyond 800m.
The 152mm howitzer has a MV of over 800m/s. Even if the velocity had dropped below 400mps at range the Slinger would have less than 1-2 seconds to engage it (although its radar has a range of 1.2km for drones not sure how that translates for an artillery shell). You are then hitting a 45+kg shell with a 230gm proximity fragmentation round. Not sure how effective the shrapnel from that will be at setting off the fuse for a 152mm HE round. Presuming it is contact fused rather than base.
Need something larger.
Drones flies low, so it is harder to detect them as shell which is comming from skies. Size can be comparable. Destruction with normal bullet probably not, but some special explosive or anti armour. But maybe if not for shell then for grad rockets or something bigger.
All of that is going to cost a lot and take time to invent and produce, while men are freely available.
Oh, come on. Аrtom-Luch is an old soviet corporation, ineffective, unwieldy, used to intriguing against other similar corporations and fighting for budget money. And in Ukraine, most of the old corporations are the same. They received large sums of money during independence and created almost nothing.
I see. And that's then the reason to do nothing about their (quote) ineffective, unwieldy, intriguing (unquote) management - and that for years, and especially since the all-out invasion?
Well, we don’t know what funding they have now, it’s classified. We only hear criticism that the authorities are not doing anything.
Then something's nifty with your democracy - because there's no accountability.
Thank's for this piece of work. I'm keen to add my 5 cents.
Let me first clear a mix up which is very common. A primary radar contact is the depicted return of a target illuminated by a primary radar system, while the secondary radar return is the depiction on the radar scope of the digital information provided by the IFF system to a secondary radar system. Civil ATC is basically using only secondary radar information, while the military still uses both systems. The reason is obvious, secondary radar informations depends on the aircraft answering the identification request by secondary radars, the signal can be recorded by EW equipment . And if there is no own aircraft in the respective area , it must be hostile irrespective wether the IFF code itself can be identified or not.
That is the neat thing of a functioning IADS, where all gathered information in a designated airspace is identified, tracked and communicated with secure link to all ground and airborne assets.
A primary radar return can be identified and tracked by such a system by many means, all safe and without the use of IFF. Once a flight is planned the IADS system has to get the info about the point of departure, estimated time of departure, number of aircraft and the planned mission / target area. Based on the air and ground situation this flight gets assigned a safe deconflicted vector and altitude which have to be followed.
Upon takeoff the control tower forwards the information to IADS and the aircraft can be identified upon departure by primary radar alone.
My point is, IFF is useless and dangerous to use if unfriendly things are around you which strive to find and identify and finally shoot at you.
For me in my humble opinion the unknown black box is the capacity and ability of the IADS system, in a saturated situation the ability to identify and keep track of many targets may lead to disaster. Would I switch on my IFF in such a situation? No, as long as the bad guys are ready to squeeze the trigger. Especially over own ground a pilot has to rely on the system, that he is positive identified as friendly until somebody tells him otherwise by a call like "contact lost", and thus his radar return would be marked as " unknown". The controller would initiate an identification process, which could be a simple command to maneuver the aircraft to an new assigned heading/ altitude or as last resort to use the IFF.
Back to the case in hand, no General gets fired when a pilot or an operator of a Patriot makes a silly though deadly and expensive mistake, but he needs to get fired when the failure is to be found in the system and its setup. Neither the pilot nor the operator of an air defence system operates on their own, except in a kind of self defence mode when under direct attack. Both should have had a clear picture of friend and foe. The pilot had to rely on the system, that he was identified as friendly. He is not outside there flying alone and searching for targets and engaging them on own will, especially above own territory with many different air defence systems engaging as well he will be under close control of a ground or air based control station which assigns the targets and clear him to engage. He could have done nothing to avoid getting shot down by one of the most capable own missiles.
Same goes for the operator of a patriot system, it will not operate in autonomous mode and shoot at will at unidentified aircraft, except if under attack for self defence. If it is true that the F16 was hunting shaheds, the situation gets even more weird. Shooting with patriots on shaheds is hopefully not happening, waste of money and resources.
Lastly, we speculate a lot and know not enough, but this General got fired for a reason, a grave hopefully temporary misconception of the IADS system setup.
Thanks for additional insights. Always very welcome - especially when one is bringing it to the point as skillfully as you do.
I'll come back with some more explanations on how IADS' work (or used to work) through the history: think, alone on basis of this, one can deduct a lot about the Ukrainian IADS, too.
Excellent comment, thanks!
Thanks, Tom. Very comprehensive.
That with the nonfailing friend or foe system reminds me always back to my conscript times serving with mobile radar unit, where on the first training we got a call via radio to switch the damn thing off as the Mistrals couldn't log onto the planes and firing units couldn't train...
Hello and thank you for another of very interesting reports! Few days ago I was thinking about why these UMPK's aren't jammed like orks do with western GPS based weapons? Is it that jammers are not available as other necessary means? Or is it that e.g. orks are using GLONASS which is harder to jam / spoof? Or perhaps, the jamming / spoofing wouldn't be of much help as the deviation caused will be insufficient to avoid damage of intended target due to sheer mass of the explosion?
Thanks again and looking forward for next articles.
There's a lot of said jamming going on and the russians are quickly developing countermeasures, see https://mil.in.ua/en/articles/kometa-challenge-for-ukrainian-ew/
The ridiculous thing is that this Kometa is developed by an originally Ukrainian team that was bought out by the Russians some years before the war. They could not get any funding in Ukraine.
Codeword for the Ukrainian GNSS EW is "Pokrova" in case you want to google that.
Thank you for reminding me the Kometa EW. Completely forgot on that article while writing my comment. Nah, that's pitty.
However, got another idea - theoretically, if there will be Kometa-M for example in GLSDB or Excalibur rounds, would it be easy for orcs to overcome it? I mean as they got the know how, it could be easy for them...but they are orcs and this could be nice irony to send them back their own "medicine" with some extra explosives.
There's a market for captured Kometas and quite a few have been used already in the long-range drones hitting Russia.
There are quite a few CRPA antenna manufacturers, but they all are quite pricey. And also sometimes things work as advertised sometimes not, for known reasons and unknown and noone wants to share what they know, so the general public has to accept the scraps they are given, which is often also intentionally false. So here we are.
Nice that these Kometas are getting back to their owners with some presents!
Some time ago, while daydreaming in theoretical spheres about this war, I've wondered what's the reason for "collective west" not working with UA on improving their EW capabilities, so they can surpass orcs. Maybe this is happening under secrecy, but considering the approach of "collective west" - I'm afraid that there's no such program or just at some very very limited level. Any imfo in this regards please?
If any such cooperation exists people who take part in it aren't talking, which is good. But I would guess there isn't enough trust on such sensitive matters for fruitful cooperation. Everyone working on advanced EW gear generally keep it to themselves. There's a lot of duplicated efforts, overpromising and therefore potential users, if they are smart, are distrustful (unless they are getting a cut, sigh).
On the other hand this is one area where "one weird trick" sometimes works and you are golden as long as you can keep the secret. But then how do you implement it?
It's very muddy waters.
They fly high and for a long time. Any short-range EW will not have much effect, while a long-range EW is costly and vulnerable to enemy artillery and drones.
Yeap, understood, but this should then apply also for GLSDB, Excalibur etc. I guess.
My understanding is that these are jammed / spoofed by ruskies in their final stage close to target - let's say hundreds or thousands meters.
So, this could work vice-versa if the EW is of comparable "strength" as orcs are using.
I don't think they are maneuverable enough to deviate from a target on a hundred meters track. Probably the Russians jam GPS at large. However, I don't have the information.
Glsdb is used for accuracy. Missing 50m is big problem. Glide bombs are used for destruction and if they destroy one or another building is not as important
Excellent! Particularly "bonus analysis"!
Superb analysis. Why is this depth of understanding otherwise impossible to find in open sources?
But one thing puzzles me -- why all the contortions to cover this up? Air defense of all nations has been shooting down friendly planes since air defense ever existed. Mankind has not yet invented either the device nor the procedure to eliminate the risk of aerial friendly fire accidents. The Russian have shot down even their own AWACS (FFS!), and multiple front line fighters of their own, and immediately admitted it. Adults understand that, as you said, sh*t happens in the thick of battle.
Are the Ukrainians unhealthily obsessed with PR? And can that be the explanation of the mysterious military purpose of the Kursk operation? After nearly a month, I'm starting to give up hoping that some brilliant plan behind it will be revealed.
Russians have a different Propaganda line and they didn't shoot their A-50 down, that were Ukrainians. They are following the narrative, that Ukraine is a completly unable belligerent.
Ukrainian military in this respect is more Soviet. Don't admit what you can plausibly deny or cover up. No failure, no reason to fire you. That is comparable to how the Russians act regarding their corruption and I haven't heard anyone Russian admitting the Vuhledar slaughterhouse or the fundamental failure of intelligence before the war.
I think this is a good analysis. As to who shot down the two A-50's, the Russians admitted that one was shot down by the Ukrainians (by an S-200, apparently), and I think they admitted that the second was friendly fire. I'm not sure why they would admit that if it weren't true, but maybe Tom, who's an expert on this, has better info.
Friendly fire has indeed existed since the first rock accidentally dropped on an archaic human head instead of the archaic elephant it was meant for, but hitting a long-awaited, limited-availability, high-profile plane and killing a similarly high-profile pilot still looks extraordinarily bad. I can understand if Oleshchuk was terrified to be associated with it, and Ukraine undoubtedly still retains a lot of the hush-up culture of the Soviet Union anyway. I don't think the Russians are any better - they tend to claim friendly fire only if the alternative would look even worse.
On the other hand, Ukraine is objectively dependent on good PR. They get one more voice from the West calling for them to negotiate with (i.e. surrender before) Russia each day when they can't report some success. That's not new or unique either, Washington himself was losing support rapidly as the population was losing faith that he can win his New Jersey campaign - so he pulled off a bold PR stunt at Trenton that turned out highly successful, lifted the morale all around, and suddenly he would get replacement personnel for his army again.
We do know that Ukrainians are feeling better after the Kursk attack. That's a very important military purpose.
First of all, these obsolete 30 year old F-16's are not "limited availability" -- there are thousands of them in the process of being mustered out of multiple air forces. Why is it a "bad look" to lose one of them vs. losing dozens of Abrams and Leopard tanks? But especially vs. losing Western AD systems which really are "limited availability". You lose equipment in war, especially a big attritional one like this. Objectively, losing an F-16 is not a big deal.
If Kursk was really a PR stunt after, taking 5 or 6 crack brigades out of the defense line at the worst possible moment, the Ukrainians are doomed. The feel good vibe from something like that is transitory; the collapse of Donbas defenses and loss of the rest of Donbas is forever. I can't believe they would be that stupid. I'm still waiting for the brilliant plan to emerge. It can't be this.
It’s not the F-16… it’s the pilot. Same in BoB, there wasn’t actually a serious shortage of Spurs & Hurricanes, but trained pilots to fly them well, yes there was until the Commonwealth Training Programme really got going
F-16s may be abundant in general, but Ukrainian F-16s are few in numbers (as of now), especially when we consider how many of them they can pilot, as already mentioned by the previous reply. There's a lot of hype around them. I'm not saying it's logical, but it's still the case.
As for the Kursk front, it was a multifold PR stunt at least, showing their allies that they retain strength and Putin is just bluffing with his nukes. They also captured a shitload of equipment and tradeable prisoners. Whether it was worth it still remains to be seen - we should bear in mind that, unlike it seems from the news, Pokrovsk is not on the brink of falling, and if it does, the Kramatorsk area is still intact. There's a long, bloody way for the Russians to go until the Donbass is "lost".
Thanks tom, always precise . .
Excellent yet work again. Thanks Tom.
Pilots can and do sometimes make tragic mistakes. Truly professional militaries seek to investigate, determine the cause and endeavour to avoid it happening again.
https://publications.gc.ca/Collection/D2-138-2002E.pdf
Let’s hope that Ukraine will investigate fully and will educate the entire chain of command.
American pilots bombing the Canadian Army is of course nothing new - once again, a thorough post operative analysis is good for all concerned:
https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1438&context=cmh
Thanks Tom, I learned so tonight and my brain engaged with the possibilities of what went on with the unfortunate F16 pilot, kind of have my doubts we'll ever learn what really went on
Perhaps this explains the long slow arrival of F16s. If seiges of incoming missiles elicit a shoot-everything-flying response, then it isn't safe to send up planes of any kind. Don't be a target of own defense. It goes to using F16s in different ways. It's a two strategies at once failing to have ground to air defense targetting same air to air defense. I would have thought this would be worked out beforehand. I think of the pilots as much as the plane. It will happen again if this formula isn't thought of. I'd look to F16s not as last resorts but as stealth changers of dynamics. At times of ordinary warfare, suddenly an F16. With a secure path back
Thanks for the detail Tom. With so much room for human error, I’m kind of amazed FF incidents don’t happen far more often.
Is there something unique about how the F16 might have been operating, or even just how it appeared on radar, that might have seemed anomalous enough to a SAM operator to cause the FF? I assume they are used to seeing their own planes on radar, and also how they tend to fly sorties, but maybe the f16 just “looked” different enough in some way? The pilots went through a ton of training because f16s are “used differently” after all.
Thanks for this Q&A seeing reports about Ukraine receiving JASSM cruise missiles and really wondering why not more ATACMS instead considering the speed it would work well with targeting SAM systems compared with JASSMs that fly tad below mach 1. Otherwise the more weapons the merrier but I think there needs to be a focus on ballistic missiles whether ground or air launched.