Ukraine War, a Post-Scriptum to 23 November 2024

Hello everybody!

Fresh from having helped ready another book related to this war for production, and then taken a ‘few hours off’, it’s time to update myself on what’s up on the battlefield. This even more so because the last night news have reached me about a particularly interesting development.

Correspondingly, on 23 November – a day after attempting to strike Pivdemash (former Yuzhmash) in Dnipro – the Russians have launched their second Oreshnik IRBM.

RUMINT has it that – as usually in such cases – the launch was immediately detected by US-operated ‘Defence Support Program’ (DSP) satellites. Essentially (and much oversimplified), DSPs are using an infrared sensor to detect the heat emitted by booster plumes against the (‘cold’) Earth’s background. Within circles of people like me, they’re considered ‘highly reliable’. Almost unnecessary to say: nowadays, DSPs are one of most important tools of early warning for the US armed forces (of course, they’re constantly used in support of Israel, and regularly detecting every start of a ballistic missile in Iran and Yeen, just for example).

Point is: DSPs have lost the track of this missile ‘in a matter of seconds’.

A short while later, somebody posted a video in the social media, showing the missile launch in question: according to people who have seen that video, the weapon rose to about 2,000 metres before disappearing in a brilliant explosion.

Obviously: the missile failed.

Sadly, the video was removed from the social media and thus everything that’s left of this story is the following still, screen-grabbed by a contact in Ukraine:

….which then turned out to be a still from a video showing the failed launch of a different Russian missile, alreadys years ago.

Before you start asking: what I’ve mentioned above is everything I know about this topic. Answers to questions like, was this another ‘combat test’ and/or ‘if so, what was the target’ - are, currently, not available.

More about other developments is to follow later on.