1.) Not 'all': 2-3 is enough. And missiles can be tested in other fashion, too - yes, especially under war-time conditions.
2.) Are you putting words into my mouth....? Or would you like to say that it's 'impossible' to test maritime drones on rivers and lakes, for example?
3.) Is anything else going to happen? If you don't know it by now, the ZSU is already having about 10,000 UAV-operators undergoing training... every month, for months already. No surprise every ZSU brigade meanwhile has at least a UAV-company - if not a battalion. That's what is holding its lines nowadays.
I would also add the effect of lives being lost while Ukraine gathers larger number of drones. Especially the sea drones - By using even a few as soon as possible they reduced the number of Russian warships launching their Calibr missiles from the Black Sea. Sure they could have accumulated more drones for massive strikes but how many Ukrainian civilians would have died from Russian ship fired missiles in the meantime, and how many air defense missiles used to take those cruise missiles down? These days there's hardly any ships in the black sea firing Calibr's so Ukraine achieved their objective.
As for the drones attacking Russian oil refineries - again the delay in accumulating drones would mean that every day they are not used Russia earns more money to it's coffers and keeps it's economy running. IMHO better to start to chip away one by one with immediate effect.
When it comes to Neptune missiles then the Moskva attack was unique set of circumstances and Ukraine had to jump. It worked even better than they hoped and was a massive PR win for them when it was needed (massive PR disaster for Russia). Such circumstances may not have presented themselves again (Russian flagship so close to Ukraine and specific weather conditions etc).
I did not say it was a PR campaign. I said a PR win at the time when Snake Island had just said their famous words to Moskva and at a time when Russia occupied much more of Ukraine's territory. Ukraine needed a big win to lift the spirits and the sinking of Moskva provided that.
I also did not say it was a coincidence but rather a unique set of circumstances. Tho it's reasonable to assume they were ready for it. I doubt a launcher would just hang around at the shore just in case and same with TB-2's in the air.
Thanks Tom! (I recognize one question of mine) According to Aleksander Kovalenko close to 2500 gliding bombs in March up to 30th. Could be more than 3000 in April! That’s a huge problem!
I have a question concerning the UPMK strikes by the Russians: I understand those (typically) do not operate with a type of (GPS) guided system.
Given that there are numerous variables to strike a target accurately from large distances up to 60 km, i.e. speed and direction of the plane, altitude, humidity, etc., shouldn’t one expect the accuracy to be extremely poor, meaning the vast majority of the targets may be missed by Kilometers and less by meters? In other words isn’t this tactic another „poor spray and pray“ version?
Don’t get me wrong, not trying to downplay the threat, which for sure is very, really and badly felt! Just trying to get some grip around accuracy of those strikes, whether those are spreading around targets within hundreds of meters or typically more kilometers around the target.
I guess even Comet GPS is possible to jam, but they may be able to protect the UPMK bomb long enough to be able to strike (almost) accurately. I am not an expert, but even simple GPS jammer should be able to jam GPS for the direct visibility - i.e. about 30km if the bomb flies low. If the anti-jamming device reduces this distance to 1km, and the UPMK is released from 60km away, it has about 59km to of GPS signal to correct it's flight, so the the last small jammed distance is not so important. And even if defender comes with some more powerful jammer, then Russians would just release more bombs, they have enough of them.
Of course, better would be to use spoofing, i.e. to trick the bomb to think it's on different coordinates. But same is valid for jamming - an anti-jamming device may reduce the effective spoofing distance greatly. And it may detect spoofing and behave like when jammed - i.e. keep the current course. Apparently, ZSU is able to spoof Shahed drones occasionally. My guess it's much harder for fast flying UMPK bombs.
I have a follow up question: I assume the jets releasing those UPMKs are well tracked by radar. Is it possible to shoot down UPMKs by „Manpad like“ SAMs, as I suppose, they are not that crazy fast in their descent?
They move close to the speed of sound in their descent. I haven't read of any SAMs being expended on bombs. In any case, they're dropping 100 a day now and there's already a shortage of Ukrainian air defense missiles protecting cities and production facilities.
Inaccurate is a relative term.. For US/NATO they might be inaccurate, for RuAF well close enough to make a lot of damage - after all they are 500kg bombs.
1.) Regarding: "the Keystone Cops in Moscow are too incompetent in their PR-warfare in this regards and thus never clearly pointing out such kills, nor providing clear evidence for them;"
Wouldn't the evidence then be on Ukrainian held territory and hence impossible for them to proof?
2.) Regarding the AIM-54/AIM-120 competition. You are basically telling us that the Russians are outreaching the US-forces - so against all Western propaganda regarding the invincibility of the US airforce?
3.) Regarding "somewhat ironically, my experience is that most of such officers can be found exactly in the one branch of the US armed forces usually ‘damned’ by Hollywood-movies as ‘dumb religious fanatics’; see, the US Marine Corps…" Well, the Marince Corps is as far as i get the most proud formation of US non-elite forces and they are the opposite to the Hollywood lifestyle. No wonder the propaganda machine fights its internal enemy.
Re. 2, there's almost no way with open source data to say how effective an R-37M would be against a stealth, maneuvering target. The kinematics of the missile are just one factor along with the resolving power and range of the radar. I think that to compare the R-37M to the AIM-120D on range and then declare the VKS the champ is highly simplistic. In the air Ukraine really never been a peer adversary to Russia, but it looks like it is, because the "famous" airframes and "brand names" haven't changed since the 1980s.
All those weapons that you proposed to wait to be mass produces were actually tested and refined in combat. Nobody knew if the anti-ship missiles would hit. The sea drones were being used and refined for months. Same for the long-range drones - they were jammed or fall short of their targets on multiple occasions.
It makes little sense to spend months collecting 200 drones most of which would hit nothing because they were never tested in action.
Starstreaks and Switchblades were well-tested and in production for years, if not decades. Were they of any use in this war?
There was a story that several maritime drones shored to the Russian side after they have lost connection as Elon Musk has disabled the Starlinks they used in Russian waters. Put to test, used once or twice, then disabled en masse.
Switchblades have been next to useless with the constantly evolving drones in Ukraine (from both sides). Starstreak have been used with some success against Russian SU-24's in the east. At least i saw videos of Ukraine's mobile air defense units using them in the early days of the Avdiivka fight. Later Russia started using glide bombs from much further away and flying less SU-24's etc and thus Starstreak had nothing to shoot at.
You guys need to start working on ballistic missiles as well. Thats technology you already have great experience with. Stockpile those and let it rain on all military industrial facilities including energy infrastructure and airbases once Russians have adapted to taking out cheap drones. That would be quite devastating for Russia's military efforts
1) Ballistic missiles of that range are very expensive.
2) Russians report that they intercepted several Grad/Vampire missiles fired at Belgorod on daily basis. Sometimes they report intercepting Tochka-U. It seems that their AD has no trouble with ballistic missiles.
Hmm, this is interesting, they must have adapted their AD systems. But still stockpiling ballistic missiles improving the maneuvering algorithms and counter measures against AD is also important. Even if Ukraine is producing 4 such missiles a month, thats a great start.
I just wondering, what abilities to detect incoming AIM-54 missile had the Iraqi Mig-21/23/35 and Mirage F1 EQ? This is crucial part of missile evading maneuvers.
There’s a lot of good information about that in the excellent book IRAQI MIRAGES, which I happen to be reading at the moment. The author is a certain Sarcastosaurus, aka Tom Cooper.
Thank you Tom for your answers. From reading the article, I got the opinion that Ukraine is critically short of whatever its partners give it. And no one is going to share their weapons much. They always give some old weapons, and if something more or less fresh is provided, it is critically insufficient.
The only thing that is probably enough is ammunition for small arms.
Sitting in the evenings without light, I read an interesting book.
Erwin Rommel's "The Infantry Advances."
It seems to me that the only thing Ukraine can do in this situation is to build solid lines of fortifications and they need to be built in huge numbers. Yes, Russia will destroy them with fabs but this process will take a long time + Ukrainian fighters can always retreat to pre-prepared positions and exhaust Russian troops. Having destroyed the Ukrainian positions, the Russians will have to dig new positions, given the presence of drones the task will not be easy.
In general, the war seems to me to become the same as at the end of the first world, solid trenches and fortifications and hack such fortifications can only be a large number of artillery and Fabs. But advances will also be minimal 100-300 meters.
Yesterday in the village of Velykyi Burluk I felt the arrival of FABs at 300 meters. I'll tell you, it was not very pleasant.
Scattering, crowding was the main cause of heavy losses. Not sitting in one dugout, creating many dugouts, for personnel, ammunition, withdrawal to new defense lines. False positions. All trenches should be connected, and do not forget about camouflage. At that time infantry dug themselves 160 cm trenches in a day and they were constantly digging and digging.
Rommel's 1937 book is titled " Infanterie greift an" is usually titled "Infantry Attacks" in the English translations I have seen. - just noting this in case anyone is looking for a copy.
It is worth reading, much is still relevant eighty years on, and certainly influenced German infantry tactics in WWII.
Except for our oligarchy, and the few idiots curious to 'model the outcome' - nobody in the West is thinking about the future. At least not beyond the next relevant elections.
Thus, sorry but: in no way is anybody there donating F-16s to Ukraine with the aim of taking care about the future.
Thanks that you answered all my questions. They were very useful but there is still some confusion
1. Why in your hypothetical scenario with Gripens only 2 out of 4 planes do plane vs plane combat? Is it some tactical reason for it, because JDam role can do other planes?
2. Talking about US long range doctrine. How effective are r 37M ? Approximately how many launched r 37 shot down plane?
3. Does Ukranian planes have some EW containers from USSR or it's own production?
4. In your answer about Patriots you said that protection of front would be futile without city protection. Why? Cities are attacked by drones and missiles, whereas frontline is by bombs, that are crucial for Russian advance. Cities at least have some protection, especially like Kiev whereas over the fronts VKS bombard what they choose without big risks. I don't say that we haven't to receive more SAMs to protect cities, but it seems that front needs it much more
For point 4, I think Tom will expound on it but there are so many other cities that lack effective air defence against ballistic missiles and supersonic cruise missiles or missiles that reach hypersonic speeds even if momentarily. Possibly only Kyiv has such protection at the moment. But cities like Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, will need to be under such an umbrella, so the economy isnt affected and production of military equipment can go about uninterrupted in the rear. Here in the US we have at least 50 Patriot batteries in storage gathering dust. I think some of them have been taken out of storage but I dont see why we cant provide a third or half to cover cities in Ukraine far from the frontline.
Hi Tom. Regarding your statement regarding the desirable accumulation of shock weapons for massive strikes, I would like to object. The entire territory of Ukraine is under fire from enemy missiles and drones, and if information leaks into the accumulation areas, the Russians will immediately launch targeted strikes. So situational attacks are a kind of insurance against massive losses. The main thing is that these attacks are continuous and effective.
Storage locations for long-range and maritime drones can be dispersed as much as the logistics capabilities of the relevant departments allow. And due to information leaks, Ukrainian rear structures have come under attack more than once. By the way, the Russians could easily accumulate and launch 150-200 drones into an attack at the same time, but they prefer to attack with a much smaller number, but every night. Why?
There are a lot of targets for massive drone attacks, but I will not help Russian intelligence. I remember very well about the missile attacks in 2022 - the house where I live was damaged. But the most powerful cruise missile attack was on November 15 - 100 missiles.
In the first question, you pointed out the tunnel vision, turf battles, and intellectual silos that characterize the US military industrial complex. Are there any examples of nations not actively involved in a war with a near-peer, which avoided these problems in military procurement?
A very complicated backdoor (admin login for hackers) was incidentally found in Linux a couple of days ago. And know what? It was released on Feb 24, the 2 years anniversary of the war. And if it went unnoticed, in a couple of years many servers would have allowed for remote control by its author. https://jfrog.com/blog/xz-backdoor-attack-cve-2024-3094-all-you-need-to-know/
F-16 and JAS39 Gripen can both drop GPS-guided bombs, paveways and JDAMs. JDAM can be fitted with wingkits for extended range, JDAM ER. Further, they don’t have to be dropped from altitude, beyond reach of SAMs. They can be dropped from very low altitude and ”lobbed/lofted” into the target. True, the range will be shorter that way, but if the attacking aircraft can sneak in below the radar, surprise attacks can be made.
This way the Ukraine AF can put rather heavy warheads (500/1000/2000 lbs.) into tagets with high GPS precision. Most NATO air forces have such weapons in storage that can immediately be sent to Ukraine. Russian AF can detect low flying aircraft with their A-50, but there are less of them these days. And an A-50 can not differentiate between the real attackers and those that only feint…
What is your thoughts about this coming capability?
Thank you for the Q&A Tom, lets hope that this time things are a bit different and the people in power actually work towards pivoting the defence industry to help Ukraine with the mass they need.
Here's a question: in all your comments about support to Ukraine from the west you seem to assume that the west wants Ukraine to win this conflict. The actions the west actually takes to help Ukraine show something different however. At least I do not see any intent from the west to supply Ukraine with the tools to win this conflict. So, what are the chances the west actually has different intentions with this conflict (deplete Russia's military reserves for example, or something as ordinary as making as much money out of it as possible)? Do you think you could accept that the motive for the west is not to win this conflict anytime soon?
I think Tom makes the distinction between the West and the corrupt/aloof elites running the West. The West indeed wants Ukraine to win but the corrupt elites have more to benefit from stabilizing things as they are.
I have thought about this a lot. And where I have come to (rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly) is that the leadership of the "West" aren't so dumb as to believe that freezing the conflict or giving Russia parts of Ukraine is going to solve anything. I believe they genuinely want Russia to strategically lose in such a way that it will withdraw from Ukraine entirely (or similar). I believe their strategy is to bleed Russia out socio-economically to force this to happen, because in their eyes it's too risky to militarily push back a nuclear superpower.
1.) Not 'all': 2-3 is enough. And missiles can be tested in other fashion, too - yes, especially under war-time conditions.
2.) Are you putting words into my mouth....? Or would you like to say that it's 'impossible' to test maritime drones on rivers and lakes, for example?
3.) Is anything else going to happen? If you don't know it by now, the ZSU is already having about 10,000 UAV-operators undergoing training... every month, for months already. No surprise every ZSU brigade meanwhile has at least a UAV-company - if not a battalion. That's what is holding its lines nowadays.
I would also add the effect of lives being lost while Ukraine gathers larger number of drones. Especially the sea drones - By using even a few as soon as possible they reduced the number of Russian warships launching their Calibr missiles from the Black Sea. Sure they could have accumulated more drones for massive strikes but how many Ukrainian civilians would have died from Russian ship fired missiles in the meantime, and how many air defense missiles used to take those cruise missiles down? These days there's hardly any ships in the black sea firing Calibr's so Ukraine achieved their objective.
As for the drones attacking Russian oil refineries - again the delay in accumulating drones would mean that every day they are not used Russia earns more money to it's coffers and keeps it's economy running. IMHO better to start to chip away one by one with immediate effect.
When it comes to Neptune missiles then the Moskva attack was unique set of circumstances and Ukraine had to jump. It worked even better than they hoped and was a massive PR win for them when it was needed (massive PR disaster for Russia). Such circumstances may not have presented themselves again (Russian flagship so close to Ukraine and specific weather conditions etc).
I did not say it was a PR campaign. I said a PR win at the time when Snake Island had just said their famous words to Moskva and at a time when Russia occupied much more of Ukraine's territory. Ukraine needed a big win to lift the spirits and the sinking of Moskva provided that.
I also did not say it was a coincidence but rather a unique set of circumstances. Tho it's reasonable to assume they were ready for it. I doubt a launcher would just hang around at the shore just in case and same with TB-2's in the air.
Thanks Tom! (I recognize one question of mine) According to Aleksander Kovalenko close to 2500 gliding bombs in March up to 30th. Could be more than 3000 in April! That’s a huge problem!
Many thanks and happy Easter!
I have a question concerning the UPMK strikes by the Russians: I understand those (typically) do not operate with a type of (GPS) guided system.
Given that there are numerous variables to strike a target accurately from large distances up to 60 km, i.e. speed and direction of the plane, altitude, humidity, etc., shouldn’t one expect the accuracy to be extremely poor, meaning the vast majority of the targets may be missed by Kilometers and less by meters? In other words isn’t this tactic another „poor spray and pray“ version?
Don’t get me wrong, not trying to downplay the threat, which for sure is very, really and badly felt! Just trying to get some grip around accuracy of those strikes, whether those are spreading around targets within hundreds of meters or typically more kilometers around the target.
Many thanks in advance and have a nice Sunday!
People write that they use non-jammable Comet GPS modules
I guess even Comet GPS is possible to jam, but they may be able to protect the UPMK bomb long enough to be able to strike (almost) accurately. I am not an expert, but even simple GPS jammer should be able to jam GPS for the direct visibility - i.e. about 30km if the bomb flies low. If the anti-jamming device reduces this distance to 1km, and the UPMK is released from 60km away, it has about 59km to of GPS signal to correct it's flight, so the the last small jammed distance is not so important. And even if defender comes with some more powerful jammer, then Russians would just release more bombs, they have enough of them.
Of course, better would be to use spoofing, i.e. to trick the bomb to think it's on different coordinates. But same is valid for jamming - an anti-jamming device may reduce the effective spoofing distance greatly. And it may detect spoofing and behave like when jammed - i.e. keep the current course. Apparently, ZSU is able to spoof Shahed drones occasionally. My guess it's much harder for fast flying UMPK bombs.
Most are inaccurate. There is recent evidence that a small percentage of bombs have been very accurate.
Many thanks for the response.
I have a follow up question: I assume the jets releasing those UPMKs are well tracked by radar. Is it possible to shoot down UPMKs by „Manpad like“ SAMs, as I suppose, they are not that crazy fast in their descent?
Many thanks in advance
They move close to the speed of sound in their descent. I haven't read of any SAMs being expended on bombs. In any case, they're dropping 100 a day now and there's already a shortage of Ukrainian air defense missiles protecting cities and production facilities.
Understand, thank you!
Also, most MANPADs like Stinger of Igla are guided by IR radiation of hot exhaust gases from aircraft engines, which bombs don't have.
Inaccurate is a relative term.. For US/NATO they might be inaccurate, for RuAF well close enough to make a lot of damage - after all they are 500kg bombs.
What about the reports of glide bombs hitting Kharkov ?
Allegedly these are some new variant with a small engine mounted onto the glide bomb to extend its range to about 100km.
That would be the Grom (https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/new_russian_grom_e1_missile_on_what_is_it_really_based-6147.html). And yes, this has a range of around 100+ km. That said: nope, no details (yet).
Thank you for the arcticle Tom.
1.) Regarding: "the Keystone Cops in Moscow are too incompetent in their PR-warfare in this regards and thus never clearly pointing out such kills, nor providing clear evidence for them;"
Wouldn't the evidence then be on Ukrainian held territory and hence impossible for them to proof?
2.) Regarding the AIM-54/AIM-120 competition. You are basically telling us that the Russians are outreaching the US-forces - so against all Western propaganda regarding the invincibility of the US airforce?
3.) Regarding "somewhat ironically, my experience is that most of such officers can be found exactly in the one branch of the US armed forces usually ‘damned’ by Hollywood-movies as ‘dumb religious fanatics’; see, the US Marine Corps…" Well, the Marince Corps is as far as i get the most proud formation of US non-elite forces and they are the opposite to the Hollywood lifestyle. No wonder the propaganda machine fights its internal enemy.
Re. 2, there's almost no way with open source data to say how effective an R-37M would be against a stealth, maneuvering target. The kinematics of the missile are just one factor along with the resolving power and range of the radar. I think that to compare the R-37M to the AIM-120D on range and then declare the VKS the champ is highly simplistic. In the air Ukraine really never been a peer adversary to Russia, but it looks like it is, because the "famous" airframes and "brand names" haven't changed since the 1980s.
As far as I know the F-22 and F-35 are not the majority of the US airfoce and navy or am I mistaken?
All those weapons that you proposed to wait to be mass produces were actually tested and refined in combat. Nobody knew if the anti-ship missiles would hit. The sea drones were being used and refined for months. Same for the long-range drones - they were jammed or fall short of their targets on multiple occasions.
It makes little sense to spend months collecting 200 drones most of which would hit nothing because they were never tested in action.
Sigh... I'm not 'proposing': I've explained the two schools of thought.
Besides... and as 'unimaginable' as it appears to be: anti-ship missiles and maritime drones could've been put to test in other fashion, too.
Starstreaks and Switchblades were well-tested and in production for years, if not decades. Were they of any use in this war?
There was a story that several maritime drones shored to the Russian side after they have lost connection as Elon Musk has disabled the Starlinks they used in Russian waters. Put to test, used once or twice, then disabled en masse.
Switchblades have been next to useless with the constantly evolving drones in Ukraine (from both sides). Starstreak have been used with some success against Russian SU-24's in the east. At least i saw videos of Ukraine's mobile air defense units using them in the early days of the Avdiivka fight. Later Russia started using glide bombs from much further away and flying less SU-24's etc and thus Starstreak had nothing to shoot at.
You guys need to start working on ballistic missiles as well. Thats technology you already have great experience with. Stockpile those and let it rain on all military industrial facilities including energy infrastructure and airbases once Russians have adapted to taking out cheap drones. That would be quite devastating for Russia's military efforts
1) Ballistic missiles of that range are very expensive.
2) Russians report that they intercepted several Grad/Vampire missiles fired at Belgorod on daily basis. Sometimes they report intercepting Tochka-U. It seems that their AD has no trouble with ballistic missiles.
Ruzz AD is not better than the Ukrainian one. A large number of missiles would make a difference.
Hmm, this is interesting, they must have adapted their AD systems. But still stockpiling ballistic missiles improving the maneuvering algorithms and counter measures against AD is also important. Even if Ukraine is producing 4 such missiles a month, thats a great start.
Any maneuvering algorithms and counter measures must be tested against the real enemy. Stockpiling untested prototypes is relying on luck.
"Russians report that they intersepted..."
Russians also report it was Ukraine who attacked them in the first place. Before the NATO joined the effort.
Tom, thank you for analysis!
I just wondering, what abilities to detect incoming AIM-54 missile had the Iraqi Mig-21/23/35 and Mirage F1 EQ? This is crucial part of missile evading maneuvers.
That's described in the second part of the feature here:
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/know-thy-enemy?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
There’s a lot of good information about that in the excellent book IRAQI MIRAGES, which I happen to be reading at the moment. The author is a certain Sarcastosaurus, aka Tom Cooper.
Thank you Tom for your answers. From reading the article, I got the opinion that Ukraine is critically short of whatever its partners give it. And no one is going to share their weapons much. They always give some old weapons, and if something more or less fresh is provided, it is critically insufficient.
The only thing that is probably enough is ammunition for small arms.
Sitting in the evenings without light, I read an interesting book.
Erwin Rommel's "The Infantry Advances."
It seems to me that the only thing Ukraine can do in this situation is to build solid lines of fortifications and they need to be built in huge numbers. Yes, Russia will destroy them with fabs but this process will take a long time + Ukrainian fighters can always retreat to pre-prepared positions and exhaust Russian troops. Having destroyed the Ukrainian positions, the Russians will have to dig new positions, given the presence of drones the task will not be easy.
In general, the war seems to me to become the same as at the end of the first world, solid trenches and fortifications and hack such fortifications can only be a large number of artillery and Fabs. But advances will also be minimal 100-300 meters.
Yesterday in the village of Velykyi Burluk I felt the arrival of FABs at 300 meters. I'll tell you, it was not very pleasant.
When a bomb destroys a fortification, it also destroys soldiers in that fortification. And the Russians just started to deploy heavy vacuum bombs.
Scattering, crowding was the main cause of heavy losses. Not sitting in one dugout, creating many dugouts, for personnel, ammunition, withdrawal to new defense lines. False positions. All trenches should be connected, and do not forget about camouflage. At that time infantry dug themselves 160 cm trenches in a day and they were constantly digging and digging.
Still bombs kill.
but you can minimize your losses.
Rommel's 1937 book is titled " Infanterie greift an" is usually titled "Infantry Attacks" in the English translations I have seen. - just noting this in case anyone is looking for a copy.
It is worth reading, much is still relevant eighty years on, and certainly influenced German infantry tactics in WWII.
Tom. thanks for the article, as for the f 16, it may be that donors see more in the future by donating their vipers than any short term results.
Except for our oligarchy, and the few idiots curious to 'model the outcome' - nobody in the West is thinking about the future. At least not beyond the next relevant elections.
Thus, sorry but: in no way is anybody there donating F-16s to Ukraine with the aim of taking care about the future.
Thanks that you answered all my questions. They were very useful but there is still some confusion
1. Why in your hypothetical scenario with Gripens only 2 out of 4 planes do plane vs plane combat? Is it some tactical reason for it, because JDam role can do other planes?
2. Talking about US long range doctrine. How effective are r 37M ? Approximately how many launched r 37 shot down plane?
3. Does Ukranian planes have some EW containers from USSR or it's own production?
4. In your answer about Patriots you said that protection of front would be futile without city protection. Why? Cities are attacked by drones and missiles, whereas frontline is by bombs, that are crucial for Russian advance. Cities at least have some protection, especially like Kiev whereas over the fronts VKS bombard what they choose without big risks. I don't say that we haven't to receive more SAMs to protect cities, but it seems that front needs it much more
For point 4, I think Tom will expound on it but there are so many other cities that lack effective air defence against ballistic missiles and supersonic cruise missiles or missiles that reach hypersonic speeds even if momentarily. Possibly only Kyiv has such protection at the moment. But cities like Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, will need to be under such an umbrella, so the economy isnt affected and production of military equipment can go about uninterrupted in the rear. Here in the US we have at least 50 Patriot batteries in storage gathering dust. I think some of them have been taken out of storage but I dont see why we cant provide a third or half to cover cities in Ukraine far from the frontline.
Hi Tom. Regarding your statement regarding the desirable accumulation of shock weapons for massive strikes, I would like to object. The entire territory of Ukraine is under fire from enemy missiles and drones, and if information leaks into the accumulation areas, the Russians will immediately launch targeted strikes. So situational attacks are a kind of insurance against massive losses. The main thing is that these attacks are continuous and effective.
It's nonsense, all UAVs don't require to be stored in one place. Even dangerous ammunition is not kept in one place anymore.
Storage locations for long-range and maritime drones can be dispersed as much as the logistics capabilities of the relevant departments allow. And due to information leaks, Ukrainian rear structures have come under attack more than once. By the way, the Russians could easily accumulate and launch 150-200 drones into an attack at the same time, but they prefer to attack with a much smaller number, but every night. Why?
Because they don't know much what else left to destroy. Where do you suggest them to launch 200 drones?)
Did you forget a massive rocket attacks in 2022 with very known targets? There still wasn't massive Ukrainian attack on known ruzz targets.
There are a lot of targets for massive drone attacks, but I will not help Russian intelligence. I remember very well about the missile attacks in 2022 - the house where I live was damaged. But the most powerful cruise missile attack was on November 15 - 100 missiles.
In the first question, you pointed out the tunnel vision, turf battles, and intellectual silos that characterize the US military industrial complex. Are there any examples of nations not actively involved in a war with a near-peer, which avoided these problems in military procurement?
what is the best resource to look at total estimated Russian losses to date?
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/02/24/at-least-75-000-dead-russian-soldiers
Huh. The number is increasing! :D
A very complicated backdoor (admin login for hackers) was incidentally found in Linux a couple of days ago. And know what? It was released on Feb 24, the 2 years anniversary of the war. And if it went unnoticed, in a couple of years many servers would have allowed for remote control by its author. https://jfrog.com/blog/xz-backdoor-attack-cve-2024-3094-all-you-need-to-know/
F-16 and JAS39 Gripen can both drop GPS-guided bombs, paveways and JDAMs. JDAM can be fitted with wingkits for extended range, JDAM ER. Further, they don’t have to be dropped from altitude, beyond reach of SAMs. They can be dropped from very low altitude and ”lobbed/lofted” into the target. True, the range will be shorter that way, but if the attacking aircraft can sneak in below the radar, surprise attacks can be made.
This way the Ukraine AF can put rather heavy warheads (500/1000/2000 lbs.) into tagets with high GPS precision. Most NATO air forces have such weapons in storage that can immediately be sent to Ukraine. Russian AF can detect low flying aircraft with their A-50, but there are less of them these days. And an A-50 can not differentiate between the real attackers and those that only feint…
What is your thoughts about this coming capability?
Thank you for the Q&A Tom, lets hope that this time things are a bit different and the people in power actually work towards pivoting the defence industry to help Ukraine with the mass they need.
Here's a question: in all your comments about support to Ukraine from the west you seem to assume that the west wants Ukraine to win this conflict. The actions the west actually takes to help Ukraine show something different however. At least I do not see any intent from the west to supply Ukraine with the tools to win this conflict. So, what are the chances the west actually has different intentions with this conflict (deplete Russia's military reserves for example, or something as ordinary as making as much money out of it as possible)? Do you think you could accept that the motive for the west is not to win this conflict anytime soon?
I think Tom makes the distinction between the West and the corrupt/aloof elites running the West. The West indeed wants Ukraine to win but the corrupt elites have more to benefit from stabilizing things as they are.
The west, as in the people in the west, want Ukraine to win 100%. No doubt about that. But they are not the people running the west.
The same can be said about Ukraine lead by the people which are not striving for the victory for Ukraine
I have thought about this a lot. And where I have come to (rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly) is that the leadership of the "West" aren't so dumb as to believe that freezing the conflict or giving Russia parts of Ukraine is going to solve anything. I believe they genuinely want Russia to strategically lose in such a way that it will withdraw from Ukraine entirely (or similar). I believe their strategy is to bleed Russia out socio-economically to force this to happen, because in their eyes it's too risky to militarily push back a nuclear superpower.