Let’s get right into the most pressing development: a narrative overload has swelled around the topic of allowing Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil. It has suddenly become the top coordinated focus for the entire deepstate establishment, with Zelensky and complicit Congressmembers forming a critical mass of pressure against the Biden administration, with some claiming they’re gaining headway.
Unsurprisingly, missile defense is not absolute. Not patriots vs iskander/khinzal/zircon, not iron dome vs Iranians, and not s-300/400 vs atacms/storm shadow etc. Russia defeating Ukraine air defense is the reasons why the glide bombs have been so successful
Russia will need to continuously crank these systems out. Otherwise when the F16s show up they will be sending air launched cruise missiles to crimea regularly
Indeed. Air defense systems appear to be obvious fracture points. Big, expensive, immobile targets. The solution to me appears to be interdiction so that a mass attack like this becomes more difficult to execute, but so far I've not heard of any Russian spec ops success in this area
Huh? Russia has at least 100 S400s if not many more, not to mention S300s, S350s, Pantsir & other AD systems at their disposal. While they will be concerned by the losses, I doubt they're THAT concerned.
one of them Is $500 million so you mean to tell me they have 50 billion in just s400 Which is entire defense budget for some years get real. They do not have 100 batteries
You know the S400 has been operational since 2007, right? Let say that they started with 5 systems on Day 1. Using my estimate, that would mean they've built 95 more S400s (granted, different versions have been produced, newer systems etc, but still) over 16 years. To end 2023, this is ~6 S400 systems a year.
I don't know exactly how many the Russians have but 100 seems about right, given the above. In fact the true number may be far higher.
They also have the Pantsir, S300, S350, and S500 systems.
Wikipedia says Russia fielded 56 battalions in 2020. The number is certainly much higher now. One battalion is 2 to 6 batteries, 1 battery is at least 1 radar unit and 4 to 6 fire units (i.e. the missiles).
To put this in perspective: Ukraine had 400 S300 fire units prior to the start of the SMO = roughly 100 batteries = roughly 25 battalions.
It would not surprise me if Russia had 100 battalions or more of S400 now.
Russia typically doesn't report actual costs of weapon, so it's probably export price, which is higher than a domestic price. Of course, long-range AD isn't cheap by definition, but it might be not 500 millions
of cause. that is frequently lost. Russia has eternal supplies of rubbles it can use to pay for its own production. and economy is expanding (too fast in opinion of RU central bank) allowing them to leapfrog first Germany and now Japan in world economic standing.
curious where you getting this number as internal cost of production? Martyanov posted the numbers on subs earlier based on budgets and documents- USA Columbus class ~10.3B per sub, Russian Yudi Dolgorukii class was built for 0.575B (in USD) with costs coming down with each new sub, that tells you roughly what the 'conversion' factor was in shipbuilding (18X) in terms of internal costs. That is also why US fighter-bomber planes are 2B each while russian are 0.05B (50 million) per plane. I seriously doubt any AD in RU costs them 500 million to produce...
Dont confuse export (money making , very high margin) prices with internal costs . Russia says internal costs and not the export prices to self..
Talk of the S400 costing $500 million to produce is total nonsense, using supposed export pricing to guess at supposed Russia's internal costs and then reporting those totally fake results as fact.
Nobody citing prices on Internet and none of the "sources" being cited on Internet know Russia's internal costs. What you can say is that Russia's costs on all of the inputs, such as labor and materials, are far lower than in the US. Based on that total lack of real knowledge, the only thing that counts is how many such systems Russia has and how long it takes them to make more.
I don't believe this for a second, and I know more than most on how much it costs to produce armaments. Cut out the MIC profiteers and the wasteful 'engineering' expenditures and you have the Russian production regime in a nutshell. Sure, it doesn't make 'pretty' weapons, but it sure makes effective ones.
If the Russians are worried about this they'll just devote more productive capacity to AD production and R&D.
Wrong. If S400 systems cost $500 million to produce, Russia military budget would be multiples more than it is.
Russia fielded 56 battalions of S400s from 2015 to 2020 - that's more than 10 battalions a year with 2 to 6 batteries per battalion, and each battery is at least 1 radar and 4 to 6 fire units.
You are confusing export sale prices with production prices.
Russia had 57 batteries with 456 launcher trucks of all types and variants between them back in 2019, each with at least one main radar and three supplemental and targeting radars. They likely have more than that by now thanks to production increases since February of 2022.
In short, >50 ATACMS for ~3 S-400 batteries partially or mostly destroyed is actually a pretty favorable attrition ratio for the S-400.
From comments I am reading in specialized TG channels from people who work in this field - they are completely chill and not worried at all. So I am not worried either. Simplicius keeps using Russian channels which are considered 5/6th columnists by Russian military folk. While it's fair to look everywhere, using posts by Rybar, FB or god forbid, Fedorov is very bad idea
pretty much. And S-400 was and is further improved and replaced in newer various,etc., etc., etc. the whole scare of 'sky is falling' is greatly overblown.
I've been associated with US air defenses radars and comms on and off since 1977 to 2009, a headline about losing some vehicles of one or more s-x00 systems are hype!
In defense there are layers and there are different technologies. Variety matters!
Intercepting and jamming incoming is scarcely harmed by the headline hype.
Wrong. Wikipedia even reports that Russia had 56 battalions of S400s, with 1 battalion being 2 to 6 batteries and 1 battery being an actual integral S400 unit.
The actual number is certainly far, far higher now and could easily be over 100 battalions.
Your sources apparently share the same lack of OSINT and reasoning power as lie behind mainstream US government, media and think tank "studies" - which is to say, totally wrong.
Well considering China's industrial and human capabilities one a week would not be too much of a stretch. Surely the Chinese would jump at the opportunity to have Russian AD technology and the challenge to mass produce with all the necessary upgrades from practical battlefield conditions. Just shows the level of options open to the Russians if it becomes necessary to turn up the heat, if desired.
Considering the pre-SMO numbers of systems and the date when the production started, they were making hell of a lot more than what you suggest they're not making and that was before they dialed up production to full capacity.
The crimea strikes couldn't happen without the constant drone surveillance over the black sea. Am truly amazed they haven't been bringing them down or at least sending up something to interrupt them on a regular basis. Crimea is a funny place, strategically critical if you're the west because it completed the black sea strategy, but if you're Russia it's a salient sticking out and surrounded on 3 sides.
Strange comments. If the regions the drones fly over are in international water, the US can use them with their drones. Those drones have multi purposes, not only the Ukraine war. So shooting those drones down, would be a reason for war, as it would be a reason for war if the US or NATO shoots down Russian drones over international waters. I am a little bit astonished you two don't know that. So you want WWIII on a bigger scale? We for sure have WWIII on a smaller scale, I don't want it to become a full out war, you two for sure don't want that either.
What Russia could do is to announce a no-fly zone over the Black Sea, but there will be no UNSC backing for it, and they love to play by the book of international law.
The U.S. allowed Russian weapons to be supplied to the North Koreans, North Vietnamese, Syrians, etc in many conflicts. There is a precedent for supplying munitions to other countries. Yes, it makes the suppliers a belligerent, but the cost of bringing that belligerent into the conflict is often too high.
Supplying weapons doesn't make you a belligerent. It remains up to the opposing side to bring you into the war. It's certainly provocative to supply weapons.
I think this is what you are _actually_ trying to say.
here's a guess based on my reading of the experts' sum evaluations: Russia is absolutely going for Odessa and my guess is pretty damn soon, because it is from there and areas beyond that the fascist west is launching its missiles. Russia has to encase that Black Sea area with Russian military. Let NATO eat shit.
What I understand is Russia has simply extended its defensive war of attrition to an offensive war of attrition. There is no need to frontally assault cities like Odessa and Kharkov if the entire Ukrainian military and and Ukraine's male population from 25 to 60 are dead, maimed, PTSD or fled to the West even as the West continues to demilitarize itself.
There is a palpable sense of collapse occurring in the Ukrainian military now - and I can see no possible events which will turn this around:
1) Ukraine got their money, that can't be used as either an excuse or new funding as a carrot any more.
2) Ukraine has gotten ATACMS, HIMARS, Patriots, Abrams, etc etc - everything except F16s for which the problem there is pilots and airfields. What magic new wunderwaffen can be waved as a game changer carrot now?
3) We all know, meaning the Ukrainians know, that Western troops are already in Ukraine. There simply is neither the will, nor the logistics, nor the equipment, nor the troops for even an outright NATO joining into the war to happen. This isn't 1914 with European industrial juggernaut armies, after years of mobilized preparations, waiting on a hair trigger to activate. As I've noted before: Germany fired 8 million artillery shells in one day: the first day of the Battle of Verdun. All of the West cannot even scrape together 1 million shells for Ukraine per quarter.
4) The passage of the mobilization bill won't change a damn thing since they're losing more people than they are gaining - and it is not at all clear how having NATO trainers in Ukraine will help. Isn't outdated NATO strategy exactly why the "counteroffensive" of 2023 failed?
And given Russia's air dominance plus vast stocks of drone and missiles - how exactly are these new warm bodies going to get trained when even company sized detachments grouping for say, reveille, have a very non-zero chance of absorbing a tactical strike despite being far behind the front lines?
striking at every opportunity at both 'volunteers' (NATO disguised personnel) and 'advisors' ? check
wiping out entire bunkers worth of command and control of NATO personnel (not even disguised anymore)? check, check , check
Russia is playing its game with actions, not BS publicity stunts that have zero bearing on the actual war. if one wants to fight, they should fight, turn off the TV the political circle jerk 'we do not rule out the possibility'. boys, while you rule or rule out or figure out what gender you are today vs today, RU is killing you, 2 thousand each day right now. Keep jerking each other off on how 'united and together you are', etc. keep your stupid PR 'operations'.
if West really wanted to win, it would have been actively building hundreds of factories now, advertising on every radio and every site the new positions for industrial production (like Russia does), putting up pay for training new engineers and workers, putting resources into it for real. Not stupid PR plans, not 'conferences', not public statements, actions supported by a lot of money. This is what RU is doing. so who actually wants to win?
Strongly agree will the last paragraph. The shortage of artillery shells was already being talked about a year ago. No urgent responses to the problem are visible in any NATO country. ??? If nobody in the MIC or deep state or whatever can be arsed to do anything about it, why should I care?
Russia better be ruthless. It must take Odessa, or else. It must take Kiev, or else. The US wants to claim this territory as its own. It is an outrageous position that must be answered with the same callousness that the US treats everybody else.
Until Russia finally clears the sky over the Black Sea of ALL Natostan terrorist forces. It should have been a "no fly Zone" from the first day of the SMO. Russia acting like Syria, regarding constant ZionaZi aggression and failing to respond, is precisely why the Natostan mobsters keep cranking up their terror on Russian citizens and infrastructure. Shoot them drones and spy planes down already.
They need to figure out the ATACMS and I believe they will. Also the Ukros are again wasting vsluable assets on pointless strikes on Crimea that have little to no impact on the battefield.
you have summarized the entirety of the UA/NATO 'strategy' - 'wasting valuable assets that I as US taxpayer pay for on pointless strikes' all for the sake of symbolism.. Why? Because of hope/delusion/fantasy/etc. that Russia would just 'give up' (and agrees to be dismembered, destroyed ,etc). How many times do idiots in charge needs to hear the 'existential' part of the 'existential fight for its own security'? RU will NOT give up, no matter how many symbolic twitter victories you declare..
Well this just means that in less than a month Russia would have no more S400 left and just as naked as the Ukies are today.
Didn't Putin said that Western operators are directly firing advanced western weapons at Russia? So the Ukies are just patsies to blame for what the West does to kill off Russians.
Sounds like Putin is aware that the day of no-more S400s is fast approaching hence the threat to use tactical nukes.
Btw, can we move pass "Elensky this and Ukies that" when talking about attacks on Russian infrastructure with advanced western missiles and drones Since we all know these attacks are planned and executed by western commanders and operators inside Ukraine? Why continue to play the "blame the Ukie patsies" game.
It's NATO systematically dismantling Russian nuclear early warning systems to enable First Strike if needed. Simple. Nothing to do with Elensky being a military genius outplaying Putin in 7D chess grandmaster moves.
Putin let NATO troops NATO weapons NATO ISR And thought he could bear iit all I remember his little smirk when he said let them try Well, he’s not smirking anymore
And he’s gonna lose this war he never took serious everything with half ass 100,000 man invasion to allowing alll red lines broken
I don’t understand starting a war you don’t intend to fight seriously
I wonder what the families of the fallen soldiers would think if you told them to their face that their son died because of some nebulous 4D chess of "objectives and strategies".
This is real life. It often doesn't go the way it's planned. Imo Putin underestimated the enemy and is catching up. Russia did increase their weapons production and made their military more effective since the start of the war. But it's still a war, a brutal grind with losses on both sides.
A lot of commenters on this Substack benefit, in terms of their own physical health, from being able to keyboard away about how everything is going according to Putin's plan instead of having to explain it in person to those Russian soldiers' families.
My parents have a triangular box with a flag in it.
If they'd been dealing with something as existential as the SMO, it would have been easier to deal with. Instead it was that asshole McVeigh and his buddy with a fertilizer bomb.
Putin thought a punch to Kiev and shoring up positions in rebellious oblasts in the east would be a sufficient show of force to bring Ukrainians to their senses.
He didn't count on the unhinged response he got:
1. The US Empire's throwing incredible amounts of weaponry at Russia, giving Ukraine massive ISR support, and conducting extreme economic warfare against Russia.
2. Ukrainians allowing themselves to be used to fight against Russia by an Empire that has absolutely no concern for loss of their lives.
The thing to keep in mind is that there is no "commander-in-chief" of the U.S., to say nothing of NATO. They have a dementia patient as their president. This allows all sorts of regional commanders, rogue elements, and intelligence field operatives to do as they please, working together with like-minded people, since no one is actually "in command." It is literally Dr. Strangelove in real life.
I think there is a commander-in-chief, or possibly a very small (~3 people) committee-in-chief. We just don't know who it is. Obviously it isn't Biden.
I'm not going to bore you with the major points of the history of U.S. foreign policy. It would probably go right over your head. However, the common thread is that the intelligence and military people have always been warmongers, since World War II, and it has been the presidents who have cooled their heels and brought common sense to the hysteria: whether the Cuban Missile Crisis or the CIA warning of the USSR churning out ICBMS like sausages (just as Kruschev said) in the 1950s. Eisenhower was well aware that the assessments the CIA were producing were rubbish, and Kennedy was the only one looking for a peaceful way out in Cuba. Such has it been until now. Even Obama refused to ship arms to Ukraine, and even Trump tried to withdraw from Syria. Now there is no one to prevent this collection of Strangeloves from starting WWIII.
1) I was taught that the “Cuban Missle Crisis” was actually the “Turkish Missle Crisis”. Names matter.
2) The CIA/Paperclip-Nazis and Zionists/Israel are two wings of the same genocidal bird. This bird is called Neocon and it sits on a shoulder of the Demiurge.
Considering Barbara and GHWB were friends of my parents (I had a pack of her WH ciggies she left at Gracie Square) and my father had a lifelong loathing of HK post Harvard I'll let you determine still what might go over my head, ya Dufus!
So you know how druglord GHWB killed JFK and brought drugs into Mena, Arkansas through his lieutenant Bill Clinton. That must have popped over over wine and cigs on the back porch.
I have said before in comments, that even though I believe our politicians are basically owned by the donor class, MIC, IsraeliPAC, etc... when you have a President who by design has a huge ego and always worried about what will "they" think, he can always stop the lunatics which want more death and destruction, your point about Obama (who I am no fan of) is a good illustration. He stood up to the Nulands and Kagans of State Dept. and they hated it BUT they could do nothing. Trump love him or hate him stood up on some issues, notice now, there is no stop no slow down everything is full on crazy
Russia had 57 batteries with 456 launcher trucks of all types and variants between them back in 2019, each with at least one main radar and three supplemental and targeting radars. They likely have more than that by now thanks to production increases since February of 2022.
In short, >50 ATACMS for ~3 S-400 batteries partially or mostly destroyed over the course of a month is actually a pretty favorable attrition ratio for the S-400.
Are all these S-400s available for use in Ukraine and Crimea? What does Russia use to defend its cities and other critical points in its vast landmass?
Ok.... so you idiots really believe Russia is losing air superiority and has a weak missle defense? Is this the case? So Russia is on the edge of not only losing the war but suffering a major missle attack that leaves the country defenseless? So how long does Russia have left? 3 months? 6 months? I don't believe that to be true. I believe in 6 months time no nukes will have detonated and that Russia will control more land in what was formly known as Ukraine. The West is desperately lashing out. It is going to cause a lot of ugliness. If nukes fly it will be from the USA refusing to give up hegemony. The author's military knowledge is extremely suspect.
The best thing that can happen to Russia right now is that Ukraine uses everything it has from NATO to attack her. That's going to "force" the Russians to polish their defenses, and if the Russians are good at anything, it's at that very thing.
On the other hand, there is no such thing as a "first strike". Let's see why, assuming that NATO makes that "first strike", and assuming that this strike wipes out all of Russia from the map (which is clearly impossible), and they do it so "instantly" that no Russian ground installation is capable of striking back (which is also clearly impossible), there are still all Russian submarines and ships with enough nuclear capability to wipe off the map all of NATO ..
You clearly have no idea even the rough scale of how many S400 systems there are, nor are you comprehending that there is a very, very limited supply of ATACMS for which the US has earmarked a huge number for its anti-China atoll strategy. And this doesn't even count the fact that Russia has produced huge numbers of S400 systems in the past with zero indication that this has not increased due to the SMO and export demand.
You mean there are no more than 6 or 9 remaining S-400 batteries, and Ukraine still has 200 ATACMS to spend? Or did elementary school mathematice leave you?
Two wars are happening simultaneously--a grinding LOC attritional one & an asymmetrical hybrid one. OTAN, guiding Ukrainian hands, is nullifying Russia's "main argument"--the nuclear shield & its components.
The cancelled election made explicitly clear what we had chatted about for so long: Churchillensky was not really Ukraine's president. He was not in charge--the CIA & State Department were. The kabuki has been this: the CIA tells Churchillensky to make loud & showy foot-stomping pouty demands for long-range American missiles, which the Pentagon then ships to Ukraine. [ Or the missiles are already there--?!? ] American "trainers" prep & fire the missiles, using CIA-provided intel & RoboHawk coordinates to hit targets in Crimea that have little strategic value in the war.
So two wars, seems very plausible to me: the one in Ukr and now the asymetrical one by Nato to destroy Russia’s anti-nuclear defence. The two are not related: Ukr army is almost finished so that war Russia is about to win. This is our understanding, right? Now, if they somehow lose the second one, lose all their anti-nuke defenses, then what? Nato will send its nuclear arsenal into Russia?
I am experiencing cognitive dissonance from all this information. It seems that Ukraine is suffering from a literally horrendous lack of men as more are literally Shanghaied into minivans and transported into battle. But NATO has switched the battle into Russia itself. Biden, Blinken, and their dogs are less stupid than we thought. Then Russia must decide how to respond to NATO, not just a few Ukrainians fighting in a trench from a field who provide military pornography to watchers of Telegram. Soon the tanks will be useless, as nuclear weapons rain down on Russian border areas and neighboring EU countries. And then they will rain down on me, here in the US. I had the impression that Putin knew what he was doing. It seems he does not. It is too late to go purging the corrupt generals. I don't think he really counted on NATO leadership being so crazy. Also on Biden as being so devious. Why are ATAKMS (whatever) suddenly such a factor in this struggle? How the fuck did Putin allow these things to get so close at a point where he did not have 100% defense against them?
All of the conscriptees in Ukraine are now irrelevant. They are Western MSM pornography. NATO has the upper hand because Putin was lulled into sleep by his own corrupt military leadership..
It doesn t matter. Not one sq of NATO land is touched, the dying is made by the ukranians, russians are being killed, AD destroyed, ships sunked, oil and gas infrastructure taken down etc. For the West it s perfect. It wont defeat Russia but it will mess it up on the long run.
Putin has been the adult in the room since the real shitshow kicked off. He along with Pres Xi knows the West elites are losing their shit. I would have to say the hardest thread to needle is NOT making these imbeciles (West) panic. They are out of touch with reality. They are also driving the train with you and me on it. It’s coming off the rails come hell or high water. I understand the nuance and the hesitation both nations (Russia & China) have struggled with to date.
So if they go easy on the West, the crazies wont go nuclear? If the lunatics that are masquareding as western leaders wont accept a defect it doesn t matter that the russian go slow or hard. The problem is if these AD distruction continue than when the loonies attack the russians wont have shit AD left and the distruction of Russia proper will be immense. Putin is a weak leader and will get his people killed.
Well maybe you can do better Daniel. Too bad you are not in a leadership position to find out. But, nah you are texting back and forth with me. Casting blame has no meaning now. No need to armchair quarterback I don’t guess. At least Putin had the foresight to get us to this point. He could have kept kissing their asses taking money to rule under the hegemony…..but he didn’t!
Maybe he didn t kissed their ass because he knew he would ve removed at the first sign of trouble? Maybe he didn t kissed their ass because he diesn t really have all the power and there are atill powerfull patriotic forces in the military who would have taken him out if he betrayed? Putin has been kissing western ass from 1999 till 2014. The guy is a liberal, christian my ass. I am convinced that he didn t even wanted a war but was push by certain people to do it or fall from a window. People think that the guy is Stalin but the truth is he has to listen to some people who could fuck him up if they wanted. Remeber Prigojin? Do you think he acted on his own or some military people(russian GRU) was behind him?
Don’t get the feeling you have ulterior motives Dan so I will play along. Lots of conservative minded people see a goddamn conspiracy the instant they wake up in the morning. “ OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD did you hear what Whitney Webb said today?” Lol that shit is controlled opposition.!
So for arguments sake; Putin is either one of Western Elite or just a big fat pussy. What the fuck are you going to do about it? Is believing that everything and every single person is nefarious going to help?
>Putin has been the adult in the room since the real shitshow kicked off
Putin has been a naive fool who got played repeatedly and the end result is that now his strategic defenses are being attacked and he is pretending it is not even happening while not responding.
That is no reason to allow the provision of advanced weaponry into Ukraine. Certainly after two years Russia knows where and how these weapons are introduced. Additionally the cost of any escalation is much much higher politically and financially to the US and Britain than to Russia so the likelihood of a greater military response from NATO to Russia flexing more might is low. The American people will not suddenly embrace some nutcase president once again once again once again saying FIGHT THE RUSSIANS WE'RE AT RISK!
I think in this article it says that the weapons are being stored in Poland. So they won't destroy the ones in Poland, but maybe when they move the weapons across the border, into Ukraine?
Yep. The problem Putin (and Xi) have is that Western leaders are deluded psychopaths. That guarantees that they will lose, but it also raises the chances that their deluded sense of reality will lead them to do something utterly crazy. As you say, Putin and Xi's strategy is to try and get the lunatic back in the straitjacket before he gets hold of the chainsaw.
I remember Lavrov in early 22 saying about the Nato countries’ leadership something like »they will calm down soon«. Obviously they did not. So this assumption was wrong. My point would be that such misjudgements happen, nothing can be done about that. The crucial thing therefore is to correct false assumptions and change course accordingly. When doing that, we should not forget, they have to look over their shoulder all the time with respect to their ›friends‹, other state actors that is, how to keep them neutralized at least and supportive at best. States have no friends, only interests, the Chinese most of all. From what I can see there, the Russians are doing a good job.
Putin is great as a peace time leader, calculated, rational, but as a war time leader? Dios Mio. When I look at him I see Nicholas II. The guy just doesn t have balls. If he was in charge în 1941 the remaining russians would be speaking german now. I can see why Prigojin was mad at him, he saw a pussy as comander in chef.
>But NATO has switched the battle into Russia itself. Biden, Blinken, and their dogs are less stupid than we thought.
Indeed. It is NATO preparing for a strategic first strike using a proxy. And again, that was always the plan. For many years before the SMO even started.
And it has been masterfully executed so far. It is quite tragic how we have spend more than two years listening to the likes of Pepe Escobar and The Duran telling us how the West is finished and run by complete buffoons, while this very complicated scheme was being so successfully carried out. Of course, it couldn't have been executed without the full, willing or unwilling, cooperation of Russian elites, but this is another part of the skill of the operators involved. Don't mistake the public idiocy of airheads like Kallas, Baerbock, etc. for the quality of the people actually running things. They have clearly done a very good analysis of the weaknesses of Russian leadership and so far taken full advantage of them.
The whole strategy was designed to get us precisely to this moment -- where Russia will be put on its knees without directly attacking it. Imagine you had started hitting their most sensitive systems circa 2010 or so openly from NATO territory? Can't do. But if you slowly boil the frog and use a proxy, then you may get to the point where they do not react quickly enough and are presented with the choice of surrender or launching everything, but the mindset is not the same as it would be if they are reacting to a sudden attack (again, boiling the frog). To this end, Putin was first maneuvered into having to do what he did in 2014, but he also had to do a lot more and put an end to the whole scheme right there and then, and he didn't, because reasons (again, proper reading of his weaknesses), then they spent years preparing for the big war, demonizing Russia in the media, etc., then Putin was maneuvered into starting the war, but he again didn't fight it properly and was looking to make a deal (how can you make a deal with people so obviously fully committed to destroying you remains a mystery, but once again, Russian elites were divided, weak, and indecisive), and then active phases of boiling the frog and attriting it began. And here we are now.
It was also always very disturbing to read the copium in the pro-Russian sphere about how Russia is somehow attriting NATO. That was always such nonsense. A Russia-NATO war is never going to be fought with tanks and in trenches. It will be missiles and planes, AD systems, etc. And Russia has been taking hits in that area while NATO is fully intact. So who is attriting who in terms of what really matters?
At this point Putin has to use nukes in the coming days and make a hail marry escalate-to-deescalate move. At a minimum, shut down the border crossings with NATO. Although I am afraid it won't be enough to even go beyond that and strike the base in Rzezhow. One or two whole NATO countries may have to go, Poland and Romania being the obvious candidates (because that will also interrupt the flow of weapons), so that the fear is instilled in NATO and they stop. If the don't, then we were doomed anyway.
From their track record of failed predictions, it has long been obvious that much of the alt-media are wishful thinkers at best and fantasies at worst.
Ben Hodges, clown as he might often be, has a better track record.
Objectively.
He very confidently predicted HIMARS will be a big problem, and then that Kherson will fall, and Kherson did fall, and HIMARS was, and still is a big problem.
He was wrong about the counteroffensive, but then he was also correct that NATO is free to start hitting Crimea and there will be no reaction.
Thus what else he has said about the near- and medium-term future should also be taken very seriously.
Meanwhile the alt-media and non-mainstream experts have a much worse track record.
It should also be heavily stressed how practically none of them even notices the grave escalations that have occurred, or just brush them off as no big deal.
-- Attacks on Tu-95s at Engels? Barely covered, brushed aside as inconsequential. Meanwhile, however, every Tu-95 is probably an extremely precious asset, because we have never seen more of 16 of them in the air at the same time during a strike. Officially they had 55 of them pre-war, but how many can actually go up in the air on a mission at any given moment? It was a huge deal. And according to official Russian nuclear doctrine it warranted nuclear retaliation
-- Bombing of the Kremlin? Brushed aside as a pointless stunt. But in fact it was sending an important message that internal Russia security is completely compromised, and thus was a huge deal
-- The arrival of the first ALCMs a year ago? Brushed aside as something Russian AD will easily deal with. Practically nobody, even the likes of Scott Ritter, and even Ray McGovern, who has extensively commented on this exact issue in the past, picked up on the gigantic problem that this represented, which is that it accustoms Russian AD to not seeing such missiles as a launch-on-warning threat, and is thus a first stage of preparation for a strategic first strike.
-- The shot down A-50s? Of which Russia had only 7 or 8. Again brushed off as no big deal, even though that too is an obvious preparation for a first strike.
-- The attack on the OTH radar in Mordovia a month ago. I don't think anyone covered it, even the people who are supposedly experts on nuclear strategy issues.
-- Now this attack on the strategically vital Voronezh-DM radar
-- And now we have come to the point where NATO is about to launch attacks on pre-war Russia territory and there is a collective shrug about it in the alt-media. Even though Russia is basically obliged to respond with a nuclear strike to such an act, and if it doesn't then Putin has made the choice to go the way of Milosevic and for Russia to go the way of Yugoslavia...
Either outcome is a disaster of indescribably horrific magnitude for the world as a whole, yet everyone is asleep...
It seems to me Russia has to get the right radars in an elevated position looking down on the cruise missiles with the radar and defence missile systems integrated in real time.
AWACS have been shot down and there is so few of them.
Might see the return of blimps suspending expendable radars ?
Supposedly, English have recently been explained to by Russia that if they keep on doing stupid things, Russia will sink their fleet and/or destroy their base in Cyprus and/or kill their leadership. A week later, Sunak called an election. He's like "fuck this shit, I'm outta here!" xD
Anyway. Russia vs. NATO openly is a whole different ballpark.
NATO has switched nothing in reality, they are simply saying now what Ukraine has already done: attack Russia directly.
The notion that expansion of Ukrainian terror tactics, that have already been conducted on Russian soil, will change anything is ludicrous. Well, maybe Putin goes from 91% approval to 97% approval.
The ATACMS are new and Russia will learn how to handle them like they did the HIMARS and everything else the West has thrown their way in this war. This is the best missile they how that we know of and they are squandering them on blowing up air defense systems far from the front line. While that is a problem I am confident it will be solved shortly.
Russia has everything to gain it’s economy has surged it’s society has reemerged gloriously from the ashes of the 90’s to what I believe will be the leading power in Europe and the guardian of the heartland as defined by Mackinder for the future ahead.
The US however is desperate and is reaching a point where it has nothing to lose and if not managed carefully by Russia and China will violently take down the world with it in a blaze of glory. That’s why Russia is still not overreacting to the ATACMS although I am sure that they are treating this issue with the highest priority.
Absolute doom and gloom. I'll look forward to you coming back with a different tune when the Nazis run out of missiles in a few weeks and the missile defense "magically" starts shooting down everything, again. We've seen this exact scenario play out like 30 times in this war and still nothing has changed, just the Russians destroying the AFU comfortably at their own pace. Like, start learning already.
The S400 situation is concerning. I wonder how related this is to those reports that they lost those high tech radar planes a few months ago. I also don't think those attacks on the ships in the black sea are completely PR events. My guess is NATO is scared to death of a naval landing to take Odessa.
I still believe that Russia is extending the line to try and force some sort of action from Ukraine. My wild guess they want to force Ukraine to move troops away from defending Kiev to plug holes which would open a path from Belarus straight to Kiev. That could be a coup de grace to force a regime change and would also sort of mirror Russia's original 2022 invasion.
The wrecks for those supposed shot down A-50s were never found, nor where there every any pilot eulogies, so it's safe to dismiss those claims outright. This only makes the failure to use said A-50s to help their S-400s detect ATACMS all the harder to justify, though.
These two planes story was classic Uroboros of stupidity case. Ukrainians claimed they destroyed 2 Russian AWACS, Russian idiots from 6th column TG channels reposted it, and west said see - Russians confirmed it.
Nope. The numbers of S400 radars and/or fire units destroyed is very low compared to the number of ATACMS fired. let's say parts of 3 batteries were, in fact, destroyed in exchange for 60 ATACMS fired. Russia had 56 battalions of S400 in 2020; they certainly have more now.
1 battalion is 2 to 6 batteries. Total worldwide production of ATACMS is 3850 of which at least 600 have been used in the past. So if all 3000 are fired with the above exchange rate, maybe 13 battalions of S400s would be destroyed.
But here's the thing: Russia fielded those 56 battalions from 2015 to 2020 - so Russia was producing 10+ battalions a year in peacetime.
They are certainly producing more now.
Simplicius has simply not done his homework in this specific case.
Well, I would not scold Simplicius about showing a problem even if the problem may, and here I agree, will be minor. There are tactics possible like extending the dislocation of battery units so that never the whole may be hit by a cluster charge, have dugouts and remote handling by the crews, etc. This would result in more missiles to be spent on every battery. And I agree to Simplicius that there are maybe flaws in coordination and communication of AD and ISR on the Russian side. But so far, they overcame many of such flaws. HIMARS are widely impotent by now while they posed a real problem when they first appeared.
Also, there remains the problem of launchers. To my knowledge, at least two HIMARS launchers (the same as for ATACMS) got destroyed during the last months, more since start of the year. How many missiles got destroyed on the ground already, we do not know.
My reproof was not on Simplicius' reporting - it was on the obvious sense of fear and also lack of big picture analysis which enables said sense.
My view is that it is also Monday Morning Quarterbacking to be criticizing details of deployments and tactics, etc. This is a war. Things get destroyed. What marks the winning side is learning and adapting, not being perfect from the outset.
Or put in more specific terms: Simplicius has talked before about Russian 5th/6th column types using "concern trolling"; the section on S400/ATACMS looked more appropriate coming from Strelkov as opposed to what I expect from Simplicius.
It sure was. Nothing new about the deep state cabal controlling Britain, it's been going on for a few hundred years, but it's certainly an eye opener for people not familiar with that; so it's a great video to pass to others.
To me this looks worse than the Cuban thing in the sixties even though the Western public aren't being told about it. And America has a senile president to boot.
About the ATACMS. How many were given to Ukraine? How many were produced in total? Are they still produced? How many can be produced per year now? What about Taurus, Scalp and Storm Shadow? How do the numbers stack at the attrition part? How many AD systems are Ukrainians loosing? Can those be replaced? Are similar systems or better available in NATO and US?
In this war of blows and grinding down of troops, materiel, infrastructure to support war, what is the tally?
It's not how many ATACMs were "officially" Send to the Ukies. The west always under report on what they gave.
US has 2k Plus of these real wunderfluffes that really works and you can bet your sweet Nelly US wants to see all Russian strategic sites and AD wiped out so US will send everything over since the West is forever escalating while Putin's deathly afraid to respond directly. The bully will continue to bully in the face of weak pathetic whinings.
"It isn't exactly clear how many ATACMS the U.S. has, but Lockheed said in 2018 it had produced more than 3,850 and over 600 had been launched in combat."
So, there are *just barely* enough ATACMs produced to wipe out all of Russias' S-400 batteries at the current salvo density (assuming Russia doesn't improve its shoot down abilities in the process), thus leaving Russia with merely thousands of S-300 and S-350 batteries to fall back on...
Why are Ukrainians not destroying S-350, S-300, Buk, Pantsir.... is it because nobody in the Western public knows what they are? Is it because people in the West think those systems are irrelevant? But S-400 is this mythical super-system that can shoot flies out of the air in another country!
Hmm... I might be smelling PR action again. Ruskies told Sunak that if he runs *one more* Krokus attack, they'll kill him. So instead he rotated the Ukies to destroy something that passes as a millitary target.
Now, granted, he didn't exactly say Sunak was personally theatened (although I remember him mentioning something to that effect recently), but then again RuFM didn't exactly say what did they talk about. And we can always expand or contract these readouts depending on our understanding of events. After all, distance from London to Moscow is 2500 km, and Kalibr has an estimated range of 1500-2500 km. If using GLONASS for navigation, it has a CEP of 2-3 meters, which is enough to hit Sunak's office table.
May 6th 2024. Note: they may not have specifically mentioned a decapitating strike on UK and France, but they did mention destroying UK and French stuff OUTSIDE UKRAINE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCCpFeFr3w It's the first topic, he's showing a screenshot of the website of Russian Foreign Ministry.
I think that the russians haven t come to the terms that the West is full blown bat shit crazy. They only deal with the chinesse and Iranians who are cool headed and grouded so they think that western leaders should be the same. You are right, Putin is a weak war time leader. He is extreme risk adverse.
2. RuFM summons the UK ambassador and tells him that Russia will hit "any UK military facilities and equipment on Ukrainian territory and beyond" and requests Cameron retract his statement https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1948389/
3. Now we can discuss if UK actually did that or not, but a few days later, UK DefMin Shapps said UK doesn't want a shooting war with Russia and said Ukraine can UK weapons to strike Crimea. https://www.rt.com/news/597848-uk-shapps-doesnt-want-conflict-russia/ If you want, we can interpret him not saying anything about striking Belgorod with UK weapons as UK pulling it's permission for Ukraine to do so
I would further note that not all 3000 remaining are the ICM type. The actual numbers of ICM types are probably less than 1000, now. The primary production run was for the penetrating explosive warhead types, not the ICM AFAIK.
Interesting that the CNN reporter said something like those old guns are facing a new Russian invasion. Which kinda seems to indicate that it had been used against Russians in WW2, meaning they were manned by nazis then; and maybe now also....
The US or NATO wouldn't tolerate their ICBM early warning systems being damaged or destroyed. We can all imagine the american style reaction if that ever occurred. They would just launch nukes immediately.
If I were a russian hardliner, I would be saying something to the effect of "If the west hits our ICBM detection radars again, we should deploy the strategic nuclear forces and strike all western major cities and capitals." Which I am sure there are some who do say that. Just like there are westoids who think the russian nuke missiles don't work.
Well good thing is they will potentially get their chance to test their hypothesis very soon. Hopefully they can keep themselves from screeching impotently when it lands near where they live just a little further away from immediately vaporizing them so they can feel a little bit of atomic warmth.
Maybe these are the generals that Putin had just purged. He wants peaceniks as generals. Not people like Prigo who proved right when he said the Russian MOD is all CORRUPTION.
Whether all this criticism is justified or not, at least Putin genuinely cares about his people and nation.
In Washington, we've got a bunch of satanic ghouls who molest children, jail American patriots, order the military and CIA to stage color revolutions, coups, civil wars and when that fails they send American servicemen to die so they can fatten their bank accounts.
If Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley gets blasted to hell by Russian and Chinese nukes, the entire world, including most Traditional Americans would owe them a debt of gratitude.
The americans would have launch nukes right away. Americans by their nature don t fuck around. If Russia doesn t respect it s own nuclear doctrine than what that signals to the West? Putin will be to Russia what Netanyahu will be for Israel, the leaders who destroyed their countries. One being a genocidal maniac the other by being a world class pussy.
"The US or NATO wouldn't tolerate their ICBM early warning systems being damaged or destroyed. We can all imagine the american style reaction if that ever occurred." - that would be a pretty ugly weakness, as it would make them very easily caught in some stupid overreaction...
...like their attempt to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
They were both anti-russian but in other areas they tended to go off-message and be generally disobedient. Perhaps their handlers wanted someone who was more N.P.C. in place.
Who knows for sure who gave Rishi "a tap on the shoulder" this week. My assessment is that it was that the Conservative Party leadership that sees two big things:
1. Downward trend in polls
2. Economy heading to prolonged recession.
They decided it was time to let Labour be in the hot seat while everything goes pear shaped and come back as saviors in 4 years.
Pretty much this. They also had a lot of people wanting to abandon the Tory ship and this is a way for them to reconstitute, lick their wounds and blame the other side for all the problems they will leave them with.
Removal of the Russian nuclear early warning system is an existential redline, IMO. No nuclear power would accept that situation. How to end the dismantling? I find it hard to imagine any sort of strike against Ukraine would force an end to their attacks. Overrunning the entire country would end the threat but unless we see a collapse shortly, it takes too long. A retaliation threat against the EU or the US seems the only effective response. This really could bring us to the brink.
The western ruling class seems intent on the destruction of the west. An eye for an eye for the Haulacaust? Genocide back on the table for more than just Gaza?
My best educated guess is Putin will pretend it didn't happen. This is his historical courses of actions when real red lines got crossed. And Russia will have no Black Sea fleet left soon because they cannot be protected.
Sonner or later the damage to Russia will be so great that Putin will be forced to step down. There are powerfull forces in Russia(GRU for example) that don t like the way the war is going(remember Prigojin?). They will invent a disease story for him so he can go silentlly into the night because you can t have a weak leader în war time who doesn t uphold any red lines.
Russia is wide open to a first strike, a decapitation strike from The Mediterranean and Middle East area This is super serious. They attacked Russia’s nuclear defense. Bet your ass USA would’ve launched nukes by now, but Putin’s the biggest pussy in the world. Eight years of attack on Russians, let all those weapons in no ISR strikes NATO used to kill his men and civilians. He’ll probably sweep this radar under the rug too
He is correct in the sense that it is correct to say all men are women. You see, early in embryonic development, the embryo develops into a woman. However, under the influence of androgyne hormones, the embryo gets steered into a man. So you can say all people are women, but men are men in addition to being women.
And yes, in the same sense, he's correct in saying Russia "is open".
The point is to never have to use it. For which purpose it is absolutely critical for the other side to never get any ideas about being able to launch a first strike. Which means enforcing deterrence. Which has not been happening.
How has deterrence been enforced when the other side just did something that by official doctrine should have resulted in immediate nuclear annihilation of the whole West? Which the West very much was aware of before launching that attack
What. The. Fuck. Do. You. Know. about these things? Do you talk to Gerasimov? Do you sip coffie at Ground Zero Caffe? Do you fuck Biden? Pillow talk with Xi? What do you know about any of this?
“Putin’s the biggest pussy in the world.” I hardly think that is a fair assessment. Of this I am sure: Every step, every waking hour, he is carrying an enormous burden of such complexity and consequence as to paralyze a lesser leader.
Putin is a lawyer (already a problem as since when nato cares about respecting any rule?).Good for business deals but a big zero in terms of military strategic decisions.
You cannot launch a decapitation strike against Russia, if one was done successfully then it simply activates Russia's dead hand system, which obviously you are oblivious too.
In the event of any decapitation strike, an automated response launching every nuke Russia has is activated
Russia is gonna lose or it goes nuclear with stupid slow rolling… whole west is attacking and feeding Ukraine missiles and shit and then when totally exhausted and out of s400s west and f35s come in and sweep Russia out
That ship (not responding with a nuclear strike) has already sailed. Nothing short of nuking some NATO territory will suffice as a escalate-to-deescalate move at this point.
I'll wager the the Russian Senior Staff has been waiting for ages to receive this suggestion. They probably at this moment looking for your true identity so that they can pull your genius into their circle. Of course, following your advice would quickly result in a glass-plated world. But at least you could die knowing that your were right all along, yes?
Have you thought of taking days off in some sunny resort to pacify your nerves ? What about Punta Cana or Ko Samui ? You may on top of that experience sexual encounters, again a very powerful nerve sensitive pacifier.
F35s, LOL. You mean the 29% that MIGHT actually work in combat conditions?
Russia? Totally exhausted? Sure....
I suggest that before you make any more statements exposing your ignorance, that you pull up Simplicius' write-up on attrition warfare. People like you just don't listen, or even comprehend, what kind of war is being fought here.
Whoever said "You just can't cure stupid!" was right on the mark.
" pull up Simplicius' write-up on attrition warfare"
^^^THIS^^^
Speaking as an American, we are always on the edge of our seats, wanting immediate resolution or satisfaction. (I see it in myself, unfortunately.) If not for the Soviets in WW2, all of these NeoCON assholes, now going after Russia, would be goose stepping down the Midway while 'barking' in German. Reflect on the fact that it took the Taliban and Viet Cong twenty years each to dispose of the American pests. I remember a quote, attributed to someone in the Taliban that, "you have the watches, we have the time."
I'm waiting to see if the Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans and Russians work something out, together, where they overwhelm the combined, pathetic forces these re-born western Nazis have assembled. I ordered a stick of furniture from Wayfair recently and, much to my surprise, the damn thing hit my porch in less than 24 hours after ordering. Patience friendo...Putin and his forces are not delivering furniture. They're delivering civilizational change, with a bit of help from their friends and allies. Patience...
«Speaking as an American, we are always on the edge of our seats, wanting immediate resolution or satisfaction»
Perhaps the proles -- but the "deep state" and their "sponsors", the oligarchs, can pursue goals slowly and incrementally over decades. The USSR was 100% sanctioned from 1946 until 1991, Cuba is 100% sanctioned to this day, the USA wrecked Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years, etc. etc. etc.
Just consider people like the Koch brothers or Soros: they have been also pursuing their «Speaking as an American, we are always on the edge of our seats, wanting immediate resolution or satisfaction»
Perhaps the proles -- but the "deep state" and their "sponsors", the oligarchs, can pursue goals slowly and incrementally over decades. The USSR was 100% sanctioned from 1946 until 1991, Cuba is 100% sanctioned to this day, the USA wrecked Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years, etc. etc. etc.
Just consider people like the Koch brothers or Soros: they have been also pursuing their goals for decades. goals for decades.
1. I would be more concerned if the Ukrainians/NATO had somehow caught the Russians off-guard with these provocations/escalations, but I doubt they have.
In fact, these attacks on Russian territory cannot be a huge surprise to Moscow. In my view, they are exactly what the Russians must have been expecting from Day 1. I am sure that Moscow fully expect the attacks to become even more reckless, too.
2. Ditto, given the evidence to date of excellent Russian human intelligence on the ground in Ukraine and outside it, I am confident that the Russians already have a pretty good idea of not just all NATO long range weapons systems in Ukraine, but how they are entering the country and where they are being stored.
3. The one variable worth considering is that NATO does not have an unlimited inventory of these weapons, and as your report accurately explains, they're using a lot of them to score the odd successful hit.
4. The other factor is that no AD system is infallible. Right now, in order to destroy an S350/400 with 1 missile, it seems that the same AD system accurately destroys many more. So yes - the loss of an AD system is unfortunate, but they're still very effective systems.
5. Ukraine is part of a much larger geopolitical conflict that is really stretching NATO and the collective West. There's the Middle East, of course. But also, I can't be the only one who has noticed how much more intense this new Chinese build up around Taiwan has become.
So what to make of all this?
- Consistent with their overall strategy to date, the Kremlin may have decided to accept some losses from long range strikes, in order to attrit/wear down the available NATO stocks. NATO simply doesn't have enough in the shed to keep the strikes going forever.
- Combined with this, Russia is advancing on all axes in Ukraine and this is going to make it even more difficult for NATO/Ukraine to conduct long range strikes. It already is.
- NATO (in particular the US) is in reality stretched almost to breaking point. All it takes is a major new front to open up, in particular Taiwan, and the situation becomes even more challenging. I don't have a crystal ball, but China may be building up to open that front as we speak.
End of day - while they will suffer the odd setback here an there, I remain confident that overall Russia is fully prepared for what is happening, and in fact always has been in fact (far more than NATO), and hence will prevail.
"Russia is advancing on all axes in Ukraine and this is going to make it even more difficult for NATO/Ukraine to conduct long range strikes. It already is"
--For instance, they dropped Krynky like a hot potato
I amwondering where the ''Black Hole'' Submarines are. Russia has a lot of submarines and the newer ones are very good. Already proven that the Yanks can't track them.
All Russia needs to do is take out a bunch of satellites and the West goes blind. It may trigger the West but Russian could havemissiles incoming on a LOT of Western cities in the meantime.
That's not a reality-based comment. The US has about 250 military satellites, but only a dozen or less of the multibillion dollar Keyhole high resolution reconnaissance satellites. It takes the US years to replace one at huge cost: "According to US Senator Kit Bond initial budget estimates for each of the two legacy KH-11 satellites ordered from Lockheed in 2005 were higher than for the latest Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (CVN-77) with its projected procurement cost of $6.35 billion as of May 2005." Expect $8 to $10 billion today. The US's 11 active aircraft carriers cost less than the US's Keyhole satellites.
China and Russia both have about 150 military satellites each and then the UK/France both have about 20 each.
However, satellite-killing technology is far from even: China and Russia are ahead of the US, and have tested satellite-killing weapons that have proven to be highly effective. The US has some anti-satellite weapons, but those are not as advanced as Russia's.
Vulnerability is also uneven: the US's Keyhole satellites are huge systems full of very fragile components (like the mirror optics) that are sitting ducks for very inexpensive weapons: launch a cloud of a few kilograms of small ball bearings at the satellite and it will die. Russia's satellites are simpler systems that are smaller and harder to kill. It's true the US also has many smaller satellites, but Russia also has weapons to attack those.
There is also a replacement asymmetry: when Russia starts shooting down US satellites the US can only launch replacements from limited sites using highly limited launch systems. Those are easy to destroy in many different ways (a single, small drone with a few kilos of high explosive will easily destroy a fully-fueled missile on the launch pad, significantly damaging the pad as well) because US launch facilities are relatively near civilian population centers. Russia's launch facilities tend to be very far away from civilian population centers and are far harder to reach with covert attacks. It is true that over time both the US and Russia would lose all launch facilities in a general war, however Russia will still be able to launch satellites from the many mobile ICBM platforms it has.
Finally, the US depends far more on its satellites for waging conventional wars than Russia does. Especially in the earlier stages of the blinding process, taking out the US's Keyhole satellites and several dozens of smaller satellites with orbits over Europe would have a dramatic effect on the US/NATO/nazi coalition's ability to wage war in Europe and Russia.
"I remember someone saying cameras were on all the Starlink sats. Probably are, for all the good that will do." I hadn't heard that, but I'm not surprised to hear it. After all, putting a camera into a gadget these days is near-zero cost.
But the problem with using cameras on Starlink stats for recon is the basic physics involved in achieving militarily useful resolution. The basic laws of physics involved in achieving resolution at a given scale are as fixed as the speed of light, and derive from the basic wave nature of light, hence the famous "diffraction limit" that pops up in discussions of the maximum resolution theoretically possible from Keyhole satellites.
You just can't generate an image that provides militarily useful recon information from a small device that is high up enough from dense atmosphere (and thus far from the earth's surface) not to have an orbit that decays too fast, around 320 to 340 miles or so for Starlink.
You could do all sorts of useful remote sensing with smaller cameras, of course, such as monitoring weather, cloud cover, ocean temperatures, crop and land cover with big (1 km) pixels and such. Given the near-zero cost of adding a camera chip to a Starlink satellite that might be why the cameras are there. But keeping track of military assets, even ship sized ones, is not in the cards for a small optics camera at a height of around 330 miles.
You could, in theory, do long-base interferometry calculations to get higher resolution from simultaneous views from a constellation of satellites, but the technical difficulty of doing that with a constellation like Starlink looks like it would be far less expensive to just launch a satellite with bigger optics. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the US had positioned a couple of the Keyhole satellites for such experiments.
By the way, I always thought of the KH sats as being a modified Hubble, given that some of them used spare Hubble mirrors "donated" by NASA. :-) I guess it's a true chicken or egg situation with Hubble and KH.
For starters, there were way more KH sats than Hubbles... The Webb may reflect some enhancements in the NRO program, though the shift away from visible wavelengths may indicate otherwise.
I agree about the Starlink cameras, and you clearly understand the optical issues involved. I wish more did. Less paranoia.
I don't doubt that ideas of using interferometry with the KH-series have been examined, but I also don't think enough platforms are up at any one time to do all that much in that area. These things are tremendously expensive and orbital mechanics being what they are, aren't always in the place you want them to be.
«launch a cloud of a few kilograms of small ball bearings at the satellite and it will die. Russia's satellites are simpler systems that are smaller and harder to kill.»
The obvious way to get rid of a satellite is not to destroy it, which is easily detected and causes problems, but to push it out of orbit or destabilize it, for example by making it spin. Whether the satellite is fragile or hardened. Some have attitude stabilizers, but they have very limited fuel.
Thank you for a closely reasoned and critically thought-out answer. This thread was descending into total "Enemy at the Gates" hysteria. It's war. Russia was always going to take some serious hits. Now back to the attrition.
"- NATO (in particular the US) is in reality stretched almost to breaking point. All it takes is a major new front to open up, in particular Taiwan, and the situation becomes even more challenging. I don't have a crystal ball, but China may be building up to open that front as we speak."
Not necessarily. That woke faggot who became their new president last week only won 40% of the votes in a three way contest but the two other parties control the legislature and are opposed to antagonizing China.
If it looks like war might be inevitable the dissident Kuomintang Party would send gangsters to assassinate all the secessionists while their elements in the military would stage a coup and declare reunification with China.
Reasons I believe this would be the most likely scenario? Taiwan's largest trading partner happens to be China. After seeing how the West is using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder I suspect the people of Taiwan would prefer continued trade to getting dragged into World War 3.
I actually don't understand why domestically they haven't agreed to a Hong Kong style reunification already. Negotiate when you have something to offer, for pete's sake. You'll get a better deal now.
Regarding Hong Kong........the protests a few years ago was fomented by the CIA front NGO, National Endowment for Democracy, in an attempt to destabilize the Hong Kong government and foment a color revolution.
Unlike Ukraine, Hong Kong is an island which makes funneling arms and military advisors for another Maiden type coup impossible to pull off.
What wasn't being reported is that most of Hong Kong's citizens were opposed to the unrest.
Also, the MSM trying to label the riots as a reaction to Beijing violating the autonomy of the HK government was nonsense. If that were the case, they would've just sent in the PLA's People's Armed Police.
Steering this back to Taiwan....the former President of Taiwan who ruled under the banner of the Kuomintang Party recently visited President Xi in order to facilitate more cross straits tourism with visits to each other's historical sites and museums.
There is zero evidence that there is any willingness on either side for war but Washington's attempts to turn Taiwan into an unsinkable aircraft carrier as a dagger pointed at China's southern flank will never be acceptable to the CCP.
I agree that Taiwan is not as "anti China" as the West and the secessionists would like. It is not widely known that over 2 million Taiwanese are permanently living on the mainland, and that there are several hundred thousand cross strait marriages. Moreover, a majority of Taiwanese has ancestry and/or kin on the mainland, and Chinese are very ancestry focused people.
While most Taiwanese would prefer the status quo, few are willing to die for the West or the corrupt DPP apparachiks.
As you pointed out, the large volume of travel across the Straits indicate that neither side perceives the other to be any sort of threat to national security.
Beijing is willing to maintain the status quo since both sides know they they will eventually reunify sometime in the future which is why the U.S. is desperately trying to create a schism and derail that.
It's all so wasteful and unnecessary because even if Taiwan had aspirations for independence but were to pull away from the West's orbit and promised not to allow any foreign military forces onto it's waterways and land which can be used to launch hybrid warfare against China, Beijing could probably live with that.
Unsurprisingly, missile defense is not absolute. Not patriots vs iskander/khinzal/zircon, not iron dome vs Iranians, and not s-300/400 vs atacms/storm shadow etc. Russia defeating Ukraine air defense is the reasons why the glide bombs have been so successful
Russia will need to continuously crank these systems out. Otherwise when the F16s show up they will be sending air launched cruise missiles to crimea regularly
You don't crank out S400 systems even one a month.
Looks like Russia will have to ask China for their AD systems just to survive.
Indeed. Air defense systems appear to be obvious fracture points. Big, expensive, immobile targets. The solution to me appears to be interdiction so that a mass attack like this becomes more difficult to execute, but so far I've not heard of any Russian spec ops success in this area
Huh? Russia has at least 100 S400s if not many more, not to mention S300s, S350s, Pantsir & other AD systems at their disposal. While they will be concerned by the losses, I doubt they're THAT concerned.
one of them Is $500 million so you mean to tell me they have 50 billion in just s400 Which is entire defense budget for some years get real. They do not have 100 batteries
Well how many do they have because sounds like you know best so you should know.
You know the S400 has been operational since 2007, right? Let say that they started with 5 systems on Day 1. Using my estimate, that would mean they've built 95 more S400s (granted, different versions have been produced, newer systems etc, but still) over 16 years. To end 2023, this is ~6 S400 systems a year.
I don't know exactly how many the Russians have but 100 seems about right, given the above. In fact the true number may be far higher.
They also have the Pantsir, S300, S350, and S500 systems.
System is a crap word.
Wikipedia says Russia fielded 56 battalions in 2020. The number is certainly much higher now. One battalion is 2 to 6 batteries, 1 battery is at least 1 radar unit and 4 to 6 fire units (i.e. the missiles).
To put this in perspective: Ukraine had 400 S300 fire units prior to the start of the SMO = roughly 100 batteries = roughly 25 battalions.
It would not surprise me if Russia had 100 battalions or more of S400 now.
Russia typically doesn't report actual costs of weapon, so it's probably export price, which is higher than a domestic price. Of course, long-range AD isn't cheap by definition, but it might be not 500 millions
the US is dead broke and cranks out money to pay to other countries. Russia can churn it out to pay to its own producers.
of cause. that is frequently lost. Russia has eternal supplies of rubbles it can use to pay for its own production. and economy is expanding (too fast in opinion of RU central bank) allowing them to leapfrog first Germany and now Japan in world economic standing.
So Russia prints its own, debt free , money ?
curious where you getting this number as internal cost of production? Martyanov posted the numbers on subs earlier based on budgets and documents- USA Columbus class ~10.3B per sub, Russian Yudi Dolgorukii class was built for 0.575B (in USD) with costs coming down with each new sub, that tells you roughly what the 'conversion' factor was in shipbuilding (18X) in terms of internal costs. That is also why US fighter-bomber planes are 2B each while russian are 0.05B (50 million) per plane. I seriously doubt any AD in RU costs them 500 million to produce...
Dont confuse export (money making , very high margin) prices with internal costs . Russia says internal costs and not the export prices to self..
Talk of the S400 costing $500 million to produce is total nonsense, using supposed export pricing to guess at supposed Russia's internal costs and then reporting those totally fake results as fact.
Nobody citing prices on Internet and none of the "sources" being cited on Internet know Russia's internal costs. What you can say is that Russia's costs on all of the inputs, such as labor and materials, are far lower than in the US. Based on that total lack of real knowledge, the only thing that counts is how many such systems Russia has and how long it takes them to make more.
I don't believe this for a second, and I know more than most on how much it costs to produce armaments. Cut out the MIC profiteers and the wasteful 'engineering' expenditures and you have the Russian production regime in a nutshell. Sure, it doesn't make 'pretty' weapons, but it sure makes effective ones.
If the Russians are worried about this they'll just devote more productive capacity to AD production and R&D.
Wrong. If S400 systems cost $500 million to produce, Russia military budget would be multiples more than it is.
Russia fielded 56 battalions of S400s from 2015 to 2020 - that's more than 10 battalions a year with 2 to 6 batteries per battalion, and each battery is at least 1 radar and 4 to 6 fire units.
You are confusing export sale prices with production prices.
Russia had 57 batteries with 456 launcher trucks of all types and variants between them back in 2019, each with at least one main radar and three supplemental and targeting radars. They likely have more than that by now thanks to production increases since February of 2022.
In short, >50 ATACMS for ~3 S-400 batteries partially or mostly destroyed is actually a pretty favorable attrition ratio for the S-400.
ATACMS, Storm Shadow, Taurus, etc. are all V-1 terror weapons.
Use on tactical objects is wasting the headline making capability!
That's the bottom line. Whatever the neocons chuck at Russia, Russia can chuck back more.
Exactly.
They've been producing the S400 since 2007 - keep that in mind.
Fair enough I just don’t think they have that many with all the other defense systems
From comments I am reading in specialized TG channels from people who work in this field - they are completely chill and not worried at all. So I am not worried either. Simplicius keeps using Russian channels which are considered 5/6th columnists by Russian military folk. While it's fair to look everywhere, using posts by Rybar, FB or god forbid, Fedorov is very bad idea
pretty much. And S-400 was and is further improved and replaced in newer various,etc., etc., etc. the whole scare of 'sky is falling' is greatly overblown.
I've been associated with US air defenses radars and comms on and off since 1977 to 2009, a headline about losing some vehicles of one or more s-x00 systems are hype!
In defense there are layers and there are different technologies. Variety matters!
Intercepting and jamming incoming is scarcely harmed by the headline hype.
Wrong. Wikipedia even reports that Russia had 56 battalions of S400s, with 1 battalion being 2 to 6 batteries and 1 battery being an actual integral S400 unit.
The actual number is certainly far, far higher now and could easily be over 100 battalions.
Your sources apparently share the same lack of OSINT and reasoning power as lie behind mainstream US government, media and think tank "studies" - which is to say, totally wrong.
Russian Federation has enough s-X00 that when they run out the nukes come.
The US' and ukronazis are insane!
@surfeket
I hear this but wonder why? What exactly takes the time?
And, of course, even if something takes a year to make if you have 52 factories you can make one a week. What is the problem with these S400?
Well considering China's industrial and human capabilities one a week would not be too much of a stretch. Surely the Chinese would jump at the opportunity to have Russian AD technology and the challenge to mass produce with all the necessary upgrades from practical battlefield conditions. Just shows the level of options open to the Russians if it becomes necessary to turn up the heat, if desired.
^
Chinese AD systems are Russian AD technology.
There are all kinds of way to protect areas and points! S-X00 is one layer!
Russia is going to survive, be assured of that.
Wrong. Russia went from zero to 56 battalions of S400s from 2015 to 2020.
A battalion is 2 to 6 batteries, 1 battery is a radar and 4 to 6 fire units.
Each instance of S400 possible damage is, at best, a partial battery destruction.
Russia was producing more than 10 battalions a year = 20 to 60 batteries a year = multiples from 2 to 5 per month, and that was in peacetime.
Don't confuse Western incompetent MIC capabilities with Russian MIC production.
Considering the pre-SMO numbers of systems and the date when the production started, they were making hell of a lot more than what you suggest they're not making and that was before they dialed up production to full capacity.
Or Russia could back up their red lines crossed and do something substantial
The crimea strikes couldn't happen without the constant drone surveillance over the black sea. Am truly amazed they haven't been bringing them down or at least sending up something to interrupt them on a regular basis. Crimea is a funny place, strategically critical if you're the west because it completed the black sea strategy, but if you're Russia it's a salient sticking out and surrounded on 3 sides.
those drones should have been taken out years
The fact Russia even allows the western weapons to get into ukraine and the nato drones to fly in the black sea is laughable.
They either have a truly bizarre tolerance for casualties, or are actually really limited in what they can do. I'm leaning to the latter.
Strange comments. If the regions the drones fly over are in international water, the US can use them with their drones. Those drones have multi purposes, not only the Ukraine war. So shooting those drones down, would be a reason for war, as it would be a reason for war if the US or NATO shoots down Russian drones over international waters. I am a little bit astonished you two don't know that. So you want WWIII on a bigger scale? We for sure have WWIII on a smaller scale, I don't want it to become a full out war, you two for sure don't want that either.
Explain to me how it's not locked in to a full on war as it is now.
Those drones are used for attacks on crimea. Everyone knows it. Russia knows it. Yet they still allow it.
What Russia could do is to announce a no-fly zone over the Black Sea, but there will be no UNSC backing for it, and they love to play by the book of international law.
And right on cue Nato targeted a nuclear early warning system in the southern Krasnodar Region. Another major attack of nato onto Russia
Ukraines entire war strategy at the moment is to create situations that drag nato into the war. It's sound, because otherwise they lose unequivocally
The U.S. allowed Russian weapons to be supplied to the North Koreans, North Vietnamese, Syrians, etc in many conflicts. There is a precedent for supplying munitions to other countries. Yes, it makes the suppliers a belligerent, but the cost of bringing that belligerent into the conflict is often too high.
Supplying weapons doesn't make you a belligerent. It remains up to the opposing side to bring you into the war. It's certainly provocative to supply weapons.
I think this is what you are _actually_ trying to say.
here's a guess based on my reading of the experts' sum evaluations: Russia is absolutely going for Odessa and my guess is pretty damn soon, because it is from there and areas beyond that the fascist west is launching its missiles. Russia has to encase that Black Sea area with Russian military. Let NATO eat shit.
Talk is cheap. Russia consistently underestimate western sociopathy.
That's 100% opposite to what I understand.
What I understand is Russia has simply extended its defensive war of attrition to an offensive war of attrition. There is no need to frontally assault cities like Odessa and Kharkov if the entire Ukrainian military and and Ukraine's male population from 25 to 60 are dead, maimed, PTSD or fled to the West even as the West continues to demilitarize itself.
I don't think this is lasting as long as people think it is going to.
The desperation measures right now are pretty endgame.
Yes, I agree.
There is a palpable sense of collapse occurring in the Ukrainian military now - and I can see no possible events which will turn this around:
1) Ukraine got their money, that can't be used as either an excuse or new funding as a carrot any more.
2) Ukraine has gotten ATACMS, HIMARS, Patriots, Abrams, etc etc - everything except F16s for which the problem there is pilots and airfields. What magic new wunderwaffen can be waved as a game changer carrot now?
3) We all know, meaning the Ukrainians know, that Western troops are already in Ukraine. There simply is neither the will, nor the logistics, nor the equipment, nor the troops for even an outright NATO joining into the war to happen. This isn't 1914 with European industrial juggernaut armies, after years of mobilized preparations, waiting on a hair trigger to activate. As I've noted before: Germany fired 8 million artillery shells in one day: the first day of the Battle of Verdun. All of the West cannot even scrape together 1 million shells for Ukraine per quarter.
4) The passage of the mobilization bill won't change a damn thing since they're losing more people than they are gaining - and it is not at all clear how having NATO trainers in Ukraine will help. Isn't outdated NATO strategy exactly why the "counteroffensive" of 2023 failed?
And given Russia's air dominance plus vast stocks of drone and missiles - how exactly are these new warm bodies going to get trained when even company sized detachments grouping for say, reveille, have a very non-zero chance of absorbing a tactical strike despite being far behind the front lines?
Yep. That's one thing where I don't understand Putin's normally sound strategy.
confiscating foreign assets? check
striking at every opportunity at both 'volunteers' (NATO disguised personnel) and 'advisors' ? check
wiping out entire bunkers worth of command and control of NATO personnel (not even disguised anymore)? check, check , check
Russia is playing its game with actions, not BS publicity stunts that have zero bearing on the actual war. if one wants to fight, they should fight, turn off the TV the political circle jerk 'we do not rule out the possibility'. boys, while you rule or rule out or figure out what gender you are today vs today, RU is killing you, 2 thousand each day right now. Keep jerking each other off on how 'united and together you are', etc. keep your stupid PR 'operations'.
if West really wanted to win, it would have been actively building hundreds of factories now, advertising on every radio and every site the new positions for industrial production (like Russia does), putting up pay for training new engineers and workers, putting resources into it for real. Not stupid PR plans, not 'conferences', not public statements, actions supported by a lot of money. This is what RU is doing. so who actually wants to win?
Strongly agree will the last paragraph. The shortage of artillery shells was already being talked about a year ago. No urgent responses to the problem are visible in any NATO country. ??? If nobody in the MIC or deep state or whatever can be arsed to do anything about it, why should I care?
Russia better be ruthless. It must take Odessa, or else. It must take Kiev, or else. The US wants to claim this territory as its own. It is an outrageous position that must be answered with the same callousness that the US treats everybody else.
Until Russia finally clears the sky over the Black Sea of ALL Natostan terrorist forces. It should have been a "no fly Zone" from the first day of the SMO. Russia acting like Syria, regarding constant ZionaZi aggression and failing to respond, is precisely why the Natostan mobsters keep cranking up their terror on Russian citizens and infrastructure. Shoot them drones and spy planes down already.
They need to figure out the ATACMS and I believe they will. Also the Ukros are again wasting vsluable assets on pointless strikes on Crimea that have little to no impact on the battefield.
you have summarized the entirety of the UA/NATO 'strategy' - 'wasting valuable assets that I as US taxpayer pay for on pointless strikes' all for the sake of symbolism.. Why? Because of hope/delusion/fantasy/etc. that Russia would just 'give up' (and agrees to be dismembered, destroyed ,etc). How many times do idiots in charge needs to hear the 'existential' part of the 'existential fight for its own security'? RU will NOT give up, no matter how many symbolic twitter victories you declare..
Well this just means that in less than a month Russia would have no more S400 left and just as naked as the Ukies are today.
Didn't Putin said that Western operators are directly firing advanced western weapons at Russia? So the Ukies are just patsies to blame for what the West does to kill off Russians.
Sounds like Putin is aware that the day of no-more S400s is fast approaching hence the threat to use tactical nukes.
Btw, can we move pass "Elensky this and Ukies that" when talking about attacks on Russian infrastructure with advanced western missiles and drones Since we all know these attacks are planned and executed by western commanders and operators inside Ukraine? Why continue to play the "blame the Ukie patsies" game.
It's NATO systematically dismantling Russian nuclear early warning systems to enable First Strike if needed. Simple. Nothing to do with Elensky being a military genius outplaying Putin in 7D chess grandmaster moves.
You're right. Putler should have nuked Kyiv on Day 1. /s
Putin let NATO troops NATO weapons NATO ISR And thought he could bear iit all I remember his little smirk when he said let them try Well, he’s not smirking anymore
And he’s gonna lose this war he never took serious everything with half ass 100,000 man invasion to allowing alll red lines broken
I don’t understand starting a war you don’t intend to fight seriously
I wonder what the families of the fallen soldiers would think if you told them to their face that their son died because of some nebulous 4D chess of "objectives and strategies".
This is real life. It often doesn't go the way it's planned. Imo Putin underestimated the enemy and is catching up. Russia did increase their weapons production and made their military more effective since the start of the war. But it's still a war, a brutal grind with losses on both sides.
A lot of commenters on this Substack benefit, in terms of their own physical health, from being able to keyboard away about how everything is going according to Putin's plan instead of having to explain it in person to those Russian soldiers' families.
My parents have a triangular box with a flag in it.
If they'd been dealing with something as existential as the SMO, it would have been easier to deal with. Instead it was that asshole McVeigh and his buddy with a fertilizer bomb.
Was it really Timothy McVeigh? He may probably have been a patsy, read the chapter below in its entirety
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-major-mysteries-of-the-1990s/#the-oklahoma-city-bombing
LOL.
Let me know if you return to the world of reality when Ukraine surrenders.
Putin thought a punch to Kiev and shoring up positions in rebellious oblasts in the east would be a sufficient show of force to bring Ukrainians to their senses.
He didn't count on the unhinged response he got:
1. The US Empire's throwing incredible amounts of weaponry at Russia, giving Ukraine massive ISR support, and conducting extreme economic warfare against Russia.
2. Ukrainians allowing themselves to be used to fight against Russia by an Empire that has absolutely no concern for loss of their lives.
He should have known better.
They counted with all of that. It was simply a plan B after the plan A almost succeeded.
They've been quite open about it.
“So the Ukies are just patsies to blame for what the West does to kill off Russians.”…..umm yeah that’s all they’ve even been
Of course. What does Russia propose to do about it?
The thing to keep in mind is that there is no "commander-in-chief" of the U.S., to say nothing of NATO. They have a dementia patient as their president. This allows all sorts of regional commanders, rogue elements, and intelligence field operatives to do as they please, working together with like-minded people, since no one is actually "in command." It is literally Dr. Strangelove in real life.
Once the puppetmaster tore the puppet from his wrist, we saw that the puppetmaster was not even a real puppetmaster
The ability to pretend ended
I think there is a commander-in-chief, or possibly a very small (~3 people) committee-in-chief. We just don't know who it is. Obviously it isn't Biden.
Yes, Aurora Boreallofus is making sweeping, rather grand assertions.
I'm not going to bore you with the major points of the history of U.S. foreign policy. It would probably go right over your head. However, the common thread is that the intelligence and military people have always been warmongers, since World War II, and it has been the presidents who have cooled their heels and brought common sense to the hysteria: whether the Cuban Missile Crisis or the CIA warning of the USSR churning out ICBMS like sausages (just as Kruschev said) in the 1950s. Eisenhower was well aware that the assessments the CIA were producing were rubbish, and Kennedy was the only one looking for a peaceful way out in Cuba. Such has it been until now. Even Obama refused to ship arms to Ukraine, and even Trump tried to withdraw from Syria. Now there is no one to prevent this collection of Strangeloves from starting WWIII.
1) I was taught that the “Cuban Missle Crisis” was actually the “Turkish Missle Crisis”. Names matter.
2) The CIA/Paperclip-Nazis and Zionists/Israel are two wings of the same genocidal bird. This bird is called Neocon and it sits on a shoulder of the Demiurge.
Considering Barbara and GHWB were friends of my parents (I had a pack of her WH ciggies she left at Gracie Square) and my father had a lifelong loathing of HK post Harvard I'll let you determine still what might go over my head, ya Dufus!
So you know how druglord GHWB killed JFK and brought drugs into Mena, Arkansas through his lieutenant Bill Clinton. That must have popped over over wine and cigs on the back porch.
I have said before in comments, that even though I believe our politicians are basically owned by the donor class, MIC, IsraeliPAC, etc... when you have a President who by design has a huge ego and always worried about what will "they" think, he can always stop the lunatics which want more death and destruction, your point about Obama (who I am no fan of) is a good illustration. He stood up to the Nulands and Kagans of State Dept. and they hated it BUT they could do nothing. Trump love him or hate him stood up on some issues, notice now, there is no stop no slow down everything is full on crazy
lol
Russia had 57 batteries with 456 launcher trucks of all types and variants between them back in 2019, each with at least one main radar and three supplemental and targeting radars. They likely have more than that by now thanks to production increases since February of 2022.
In short, >50 ATACMS for ~3 S-400 batteries partially or mostly destroyed over the course of a month is actually a pretty favorable attrition ratio for the S-400.
Are all these S-400s available for use in Ukraine and Crimea? What does Russia use to defend its cities and other critical points in its vast landmass?
Lol. No. This is just Simplicius showing himself as an idiot. This is terrible analysis.
You can back that up with facts or reasons? Do tell us more.
Go back to twitter
Did they tear ya a new one on ZH?
You don't belong here, simpleton.
Ok.... so you idiots really believe Russia is losing air superiority and has a weak missle defense? Is this the case? So Russia is on the edge of not only losing the war but suffering a major missle attack that leaves the country defenseless? So how long does Russia have left? 3 months? 6 months? I don't believe that to be true. I believe in 6 months time no nukes will have detonated and that Russia will control more land in what was formly known as Ukraine. The West is desperately lashing out. It is going to cause a lot of ugliness. If nukes fly it will be from the USA refusing to give up hegemony. The author's military knowledge is extremely suspect.
Andrei Martyanov, is that you?
The best thing that can happen to Russia right now is that Ukraine uses everything it has from NATO to attack her. That's going to "force" the Russians to polish their defenses, and if the Russians are good at anything, it's at that very thing.
On the other hand, there is no such thing as a "first strike". Let's see why, assuming that NATO makes that "first strike", and assuming that this strike wipes out all of Russia from the map (which is clearly impossible), and they do it so "instantly" that no Russian ground installation is capable of striking back (which is also clearly impossible), there are still all Russian submarines and ships with enough nuclear capability to wipe off the map all of NATO ..
Wrong.
You clearly have no idea even the rough scale of how many S400 systems there are, nor are you comprehending that there is a very, very limited supply of ATACMS for which the US has earmarked a huge number for its anti-China atoll strategy. And this doesn't even count the fact that Russia has produced huge numbers of S400 systems in the past with zero indication that this has not increased due to the SMO and export demand.
You mean there are no more than 6 or 9 remaining S-400 batteries, and Ukraine still has 200 ATACMS to spend? Or did elementary school mathematice leave you?
Yep. The Russians need to shit or get off the pot. Enough empty threats against nato. Do something.
Thank you for continued great reporting.
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Country-Then-Richard-Cook/dp/1949762858
https://rickycook21.substack.com/?utm_source=homepage_recommendations&utm_campaign=1658626
Gearing up for the long haul, especially now that the missile war is heating up.
Two wars are happening simultaneously--a grinding LOC attritional one & an asymmetrical hybrid one. OTAN, guiding Ukrainian hands, is nullifying Russia's "main argument"--the nuclear shield & its components.
The cancelled election made explicitly clear what we had chatted about for so long: Churchillensky was not really Ukraine's president. He was not in charge--the CIA & State Department were. The kabuki has been this: the CIA tells Churchillensky to make loud & showy foot-stomping pouty demands for long-range American missiles, which the Pentagon then ships to Ukraine. [ Or the missiles are already there--?!? ] American "trainers" prep & fire the missiles, using CIA-provided intel & RoboHawk coordinates to hit targets in Crimea that have little strategic value in the war.
Until now.
Battle is the ultimate cauldron of learning.
Ukraine has been directly run by Yankland since the Maidan coup 2014.
So two wars, seems very plausible to me: the one in Ukr and now the asymetrical one by Nato to destroy Russia’s anti-nuclear defence. The two are not related: Ukr army is almost finished so that war Russia is about to win. This is our understanding, right? Now, if they somehow lose the second one, lose all their anti-nuke defenses, then what? Nato will send its nuclear arsenal into Russia?
^
I am experiencing cognitive dissonance from all this information. It seems that Ukraine is suffering from a literally horrendous lack of men as more are literally Shanghaied into minivans and transported into battle. But NATO has switched the battle into Russia itself. Biden, Blinken, and their dogs are less stupid than we thought. Then Russia must decide how to respond to NATO, not just a few Ukrainians fighting in a trench from a field who provide military pornography to watchers of Telegram. Soon the tanks will be useless, as nuclear weapons rain down on Russian border areas and neighboring EU countries. And then they will rain down on me, here in the US. I had the impression that Putin knew what he was doing. It seems he does not. It is too late to go purging the corrupt generals. I don't think he really counted on NATO leadership being so crazy. Also on Biden as being so devious. Why are ATAKMS (whatever) suddenly such a factor in this struggle? How the fuck did Putin allow these things to get so close at a point where he did not have 100% defense against them?
All of the conscriptees in Ukraine are now irrelevant. They are Western MSM pornography. NATO has the upper hand because Putin was lulled into sleep by his own corrupt military leadership..
It doesn t matter. Not one sq of NATO land is touched, the dying is made by the ukranians, russians are being killed, AD destroyed, ships sunked, oil and gas infrastructure taken down etc. For the West it s perfect. It wont defeat Russia but it will mess it up on the long run.
So what is Russia waiting for?
For you to be parachuted into Stavka HQ to tell them what to do, of course.
lol
Lulled to sleep. Get real.
Putin has been the adult in the room since the real shitshow kicked off. He along with Pres Xi knows the West elites are losing their shit. I would have to say the hardest thread to needle is NOT making these imbeciles (West) panic. They are out of touch with reality. They are also driving the train with you and me on it. It’s coming off the rails come hell or high water. I understand the nuance and the hesitation both nations (Russia & China) have struggled with to date.
So if they go easy on the West, the crazies wont go nuclear? If the lunatics that are masquareding as western leaders wont accept a defect it doesn t matter that the russian go slow or hard. The problem is if these AD distruction continue than when the loonies attack the russians wont have shit AD left and the distruction of Russia proper will be immense. Putin is a weak leader and will get his people killed.
Well maybe you can do better Daniel. Too bad you are not in a leadership position to find out. But, nah you are texting back and forth with me. Casting blame has no meaning now. No need to armchair quarterback I don’t guess. At least Putin had the foresight to get us to this point. He could have kept kissing their asses taking money to rule under the hegemony…..but he didn’t!
Maybe he didn t kissed their ass because he knew he would ve removed at the first sign of trouble? Maybe he didn t kissed their ass because he diesn t really have all the power and there are atill powerfull patriotic forces in the military who would have taken him out if he betrayed? Putin has been kissing western ass from 1999 till 2014. The guy is a liberal, christian my ass. I am convinced that he didn t even wanted a war but was push by certain people to do it or fall from a window. People think that the guy is Stalin but the truth is he has to listen to some people who could fuck him up if they wanted. Remeber Prigojin? Do you think he acted on his own or some military people(russian GRU) was behind him?
Don’t get the feeling you have ulterior motives Dan so I will play along. Lots of conservative minded people see a goddamn conspiracy the instant they wake up in the morning. “ OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD did you hear what Whitney Webb said today?” Lol that shit is controlled opposition.!
So for arguments sake; Putin is either one of Western Elite or just a big fat pussy. What the fuck are you going to do about it? Is believing that everything and every single person is nefarious going to help?
my brother in christ the united states does not even make atacms missiles any more, we don't hardly making anything
and we can't do anything new or restart production because we lack the resources now that we let the industries die
these atacms attacks are hurting russia, but russia will win the war
>Putin has been the adult in the room since the real shitshow kicked off
Putin has been a naive fool who got played repeatedly and the end result is that now his strategic defenses are being attacked and he is pretending it is not even happening while not responding.
Just fuck off with your ignorance General Moron. You are a pathetic trailer trash buffoon. A know it all that knows fuck all.
grr ..you are on good form today, you'll need to be...you've got jokers to the left, jokers to the right..
He's spreading his shit on other forums now. I think he actually believes the verbal diarrhea that pour out of his piehole.
lol
That is no reason to allow the provision of advanced weaponry into Ukraine. Certainly after two years Russia knows where and how these weapons are introduced. Additionally the cost of any escalation is much much higher politically and financially to the US and Britain than to Russia so the likelihood of a greater military response from NATO to Russia flexing more might is low. The American people will not suddenly embrace some nutcase president once again once again once again saying FIGHT THE RUSSIANS WE'RE AT RISK!
Since when did the "American people" have any say in this? The "American people" is Nuland and Graham.
The only say the American people have is in refusing to join the military and opting out of this shit vile corrupt system.
https://identitydixie.com/2023/07/03/military-recruitment-and-secession-a-pathway-to-victory/
I think in this article it says that the weapons are being stored in Poland. So they won't destroy the ones in Poland, but maybe when they move the weapons across the border, into Ukraine?
Yep. The problem Putin (and Xi) have is that Western leaders are deluded psychopaths. That guarantees that they will lose, but it also raises the chances that their deluded sense of reality will lead them to do something utterly crazy. As you say, Putin and Xi's strategy is to try and get the lunatic back in the straitjacket before he gets hold of the chainsaw.
You said it perfectly Nato got to fight and Exhaust Russia without any price Because NATO assets off limits. 3-D chess master got played
I remember Lavrov in early 22 saying about the Nato countries’ leadership something like »they will calm down soon«. Obviously they did not. So this assumption was wrong. My point would be that such misjudgements happen, nothing can be done about that. The crucial thing therefore is to correct false assumptions and change course accordingly. When doing that, we should not forget, they have to look over their shoulder all the time with respect to their ›friends‹, other state actors that is, how to keep them neutralized at least and supportive at best. States have no friends, only interests, the Chinese most of all. From what I can see there, the Russians are doing a good job.
^
Lavrov was trying to keep morale up. They need to taste defeat to change.
In that case: He obviously succeeded tremendously, holds until this day, no abating in sight.
Putin is great as a peace time leader, calculated, rational, but as a war time leader? Dios Mio. When I look at him I see Nicholas II. The guy just doesn t have balls. If he was in charge în 1941 the remaining russians would be speaking german now. I can see why Prigojin was mad at him, he saw a pussy as comander in chef.
>But NATO has switched the battle into Russia itself. Biden, Blinken, and their dogs are less stupid than we thought.
Indeed. It is NATO preparing for a strategic first strike using a proxy. And again, that was always the plan. For many years before the SMO even started.
And it has been masterfully executed so far. It is quite tragic how we have spend more than two years listening to the likes of Pepe Escobar and The Duran telling us how the West is finished and run by complete buffoons, while this very complicated scheme was being so successfully carried out. Of course, it couldn't have been executed without the full, willing or unwilling, cooperation of Russian elites, but this is another part of the skill of the operators involved. Don't mistake the public idiocy of airheads like Kallas, Baerbock, etc. for the quality of the people actually running things. They have clearly done a very good analysis of the weaknesses of Russian leadership and so far taken full advantage of them.
The whole strategy was designed to get us precisely to this moment -- where Russia will be put on its knees without directly attacking it. Imagine you had started hitting their most sensitive systems circa 2010 or so openly from NATO territory? Can't do. But if you slowly boil the frog and use a proxy, then you may get to the point where they do not react quickly enough and are presented with the choice of surrender or launching everything, but the mindset is not the same as it would be if they are reacting to a sudden attack (again, boiling the frog). To this end, Putin was first maneuvered into having to do what he did in 2014, but he also had to do a lot more and put an end to the whole scheme right there and then, and he didn't, because reasons (again, proper reading of his weaknesses), then they spent years preparing for the big war, demonizing Russia in the media, etc., then Putin was maneuvered into starting the war, but he again didn't fight it properly and was looking to make a deal (how can you make a deal with people so obviously fully committed to destroying you remains a mystery, but once again, Russian elites were divided, weak, and indecisive), and then active phases of boiling the frog and attriting it began. And here we are now.
It was also always very disturbing to read the copium in the pro-Russian sphere about how Russia is somehow attriting NATO. That was always such nonsense. A Russia-NATO war is never going to be fought with tanks and in trenches. It will be missiles and planes, AD systems, etc. And Russia has been taking hits in that area while NATO is fully intact. So who is attriting who in terms of what really matters?
At this point Putin has to use nukes in the coming days and make a hail marry escalate-to-deescalate move. At a minimum, shut down the border crossings with NATO. Although I am afraid it won't be enough to even go beyond that and strike the base in Rzezhow. One or two whole NATO countries may have to go, Poland and Romania being the obvious candidates (because that will also interrupt the flow of weapons), so that the fear is instilled in NATO and they stop. If the don't, then we were doomed anyway.
From their track record of failed predictions, it has long been obvious that much of the alt-media are wishful thinkers at best and fantasies at worst.
Ben Hodges, clown as he might often be, has a better track record.
Objectively.
He very confidently predicted HIMARS will be a big problem, and then that Kherson will fall, and Kherson did fall, and HIMARS was, and still is a big problem.
He was wrong about the counteroffensive, but then he was also correct that NATO is free to start hitting Crimea and there will be no reaction.
Thus what else he has said about the near- and medium-term future should also be taken very seriously.
Meanwhile the alt-media and non-mainstream experts have a much worse track record.
It should also be heavily stressed how practically none of them even notices the grave escalations that have occurred, or just brush them off as no big deal.
-- Attacks on Tu-95s at Engels? Barely covered, brushed aside as inconsequential. Meanwhile, however, every Tu-95 is probably an extremely precious asset, because we have never seen more of 16 of them in the air at the same time during a strike. Officially they had 55 of them pre-war, but how many can actually go up in the air on a mission at any given moment? It was a huge deal. And according to official Russian nuclear doctrine it warranted nuclear retaliation
-- Bombing of the Kremlin? Brushed aside as a pointless stunt. But in fact it was sending an important message that internal Russia security is completely compromised, and thus was a huge deal
-- The arrival of the first ALCMs a year ago? Brushed aside as something Russian AD will easily deal with. Practically nobody, even the likes of Scott Ritter, and even Ray McGovern, who has extensively commented on this exact issue in the past, picked up on the gigantic problem that this represented, which is that it accustoms Russian AD to not seeing such missiles as a launch-on-warning threat, and is thus a first stage of preparation for a strategic first strike.
-- The shot down A-50s? Of which Russia had only 7 or 8. Again brushed off as no big deal, even though that too is an obvious preparation for a first strike.
-- The attack on the OTH radar in Mordovia a month ago. I don't think anyone covered it, even the people who are supposedly experts on nuclear strategy issues.
-- Now this attack on the strategically vital Voronezh-DM radar
-- And now we have come to the point where NATO is about to launch attacks on pre-war Russia territory and there is a collective shrug about it in the alt-media. Even though Russia is basically obliged to respond with a nuclear strike to such an act, and if it doesn't then Putin has made the choice to go the way of Milosevic and for Russia to go the way of Yugoslavia...
Either outcome is a disaster of indescribably horrific magnitude for the world as a whole, yet everyone is asleep...
It seems to me Russia has to get the right radars in an elevated position looking down on the cruise missiles with the radar and defence missile systems integrated in real time.
AWACS have been shot down and there is so few of them.
Might see the return of blimps suspending expendable radars ?
Supposedly, English have recently been explained to by Russia that if they keep on doing stupid things, Russia will sink their fleet and/or destroy their base in Cyprus and/or kill their leadership. A week later, Sunak called an election. He's like "fuck this shit, I'm outta here!" xD
Anyway. Russia vs. NATO openly is a whole different ballpark.
Reference: https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1948389/ Money shot: "any UK military facilities and equipment on Ukrainian territory and beyond could be hit" Key words: "AND BEYOND".
Basically, yes. I have said all along that Russia was foolish not to fight to win.
And this never really was about Ukraine or Ukrainians. The West no more cares about them than it cares about the chickens that go into the McNuggets.
Utterly confused post.
NATO has switched nothing in reality, they are simply saying now what Ukraine has already done: attack Russia directly.
The notion that expansion of Ukrainian terror tactics, that have already been conducted on Russian soil, will change anything is ludicrous. Well, maybe Putin goes from 91% approval to 97% approval.
>Biden, Blinken, and their dogs are less stupid than we thought.
no, they are literal drooling retards, they're simply escalating now because the other options didn't work
The ATACMS are new and Russia will learn how to handle them like they did the HIMARS and everything else the West has thrown their way in this war. This is the best missile they how that we know of and they are squandering them on blowing up air defense systems far from the front line. While that is a problem I am confident it will be solved shortly.
Russia has everything to gain it’s economy has surged it’s society has reemerged gloriously from the ashes of the 90’s to what I believe will be the leading power in Europe and the guardian of the heartland as defined by Mackinder for the future ahead.
The US however is desperate and is reaching a point where it has nothing to lose and if not managed carefully by Russia and China will violently take down the world with it in a blaze of glory. That’s why Russia is still not overreacting to the ATACMS although I am sure that they are treating this issue with the highest priority.
Sounds like an agent provocateur to me.
Absolute doom and gloom. I'll look forward to you coming back with a different tune when the Nazis run out of missiles in a few weeks and the missile defense "magically" starts shooting down everything, again. We've seen this exact scenario play out like 30 times in this war and still nothing has changed, just the Russians destroying the AFU comfortably at their own pace. Like, start learning already.
The S400 situation is concerning. I wonder how related this is to those reports that they lost those high tech radar planes a few months ago. I also don't think those attacks on the ships in the black sea are completely PR events. My guess is NATO is scared to death of a naval landing to take Odessa.
I still believe that Russia is extending the line to try and force some sort of action from Ukraine. My wild guess they want to force Ukraine to move troops away from defending Kiev to plug holes which would open a path from Belarus straight to Kiev. That could be a coup de grace to force a regime change and would also sort of mirror Russia's original 2022 invasion.
The wrecks for those supposed shot down A-50s were never found, nor where there every any pilot eulogies, so it's safe to dismiss those claims outright. This only makes the failure to use said A-50s to help their S-400s detect ATACMS all the harder to justify, though.
These two planes story was classic Uroboros of stupidity case. Ukrainians claimed they destroyed 2 Russian AWACS, Russian idiots from 6th column TG channels reposted it, and west said see - Russians confirmed it.
In reality, the story has died, never confirmed.
That's how myth was born
Nope. The numbers of S400 radars and/or fire units destroyed is very low compared to the number of ATACMS fired. let's say parts of 3 batteries were, in fact, destroyed in exchange for 60 ATACMS fired. Russia had 56 battalions of S400 in 2020; they certainly have more now.
1 battalion is 2 to 6 batteries. Total worldwide production of ATACMS is 3850 of which at least 600 have been used in the past. So if all 3000 are fired with the above exchange rate, maybe 13 battalions of S400s would be destroyed.
But here's the thing: Russia fielded those 56 battalions from 2015 to 2020 - so Russia was producing 10+ battalions a year in peacetime.
They are certainly producing more now.
Simplicius has simply not done his homework in this specific case.
Well, I would not scold Simplicius about showing a problem even if the problem may, and here I agree, will be minor. There are tactics possible like extending the dislocation of battery units so that never the whole may be hit by a cluster charge, have dugouts and remote handling by the crews, etc. This would result in more missiles to be spent on every battery. And I agree to Simplicius that there are maybe flaws in coordination and communication of AD and ISR on the Russian side. But so far, they overcame many of such flaws. HIMARS are widely impotent by now while they posed a real problem when they first appeared.
Also, there remains the problem of launchers. To my knowledge, at least two HIMARS launchers (the same as for ATACMS) got destroyed during the last months, more since start of the year. How many missiles got destroyed on the ground already, we do not know.
My reproof was not on Simplicius' reporting - it was on the obvious sense of fear and also lack of big picture analysis which enables said sense.
My view is that it is also Monday Morning Quarterbacking to be criticizing details of deployments and tactics, etc. This is a war. Things get destroyed. What marks the winning side is learning and adapting, not being perfect from the outset.
Or put in more specific terms: Simplicius has talked before about Russian 5th/6th column types using "concern trolling"; the section on S400/ATACMS looked more appropriate coming from Strelkov as opposed to what I expect from Simplicius.
Good as always, thank you !!!
Do you have a link for the video with Andrew Bridgen?
That was pretty chilling wasn’t it.
It sure was. Nothing new about the deep state cabal controlling Britain, it's been going on for a few hundred years, but it's certainly an eye opener for people not familiar with that; so it's a great video to pass to others.
https://rumble.com/v4uyxbl-172-andrew-bridgen-mp.html
Thank you.
As long as the overall trend is escalation, escalation, escalation, we should all be very worried…
^
To me this looks worse than the Cuban thing in the sixties even though the Western public aren't being told about it. And America has a senile president to boot.
About the ATACMS. How many were given to Ukraine? How many were produced in total? Are they still produced? How many can be produced per year now? What about Taurus, Scalp and Storm Shadow? How do the numbers stack at the attrition part? How many AD systems are Ukrainians loosing? Can those be replaced? Are similar systems or better available in NATO and US?
In this war of blows and grinding down of troops, materiel, infrastructure to support war, what is the tally?
It's not how many ATACMs were "officially" Send to the Ukies. The west always under report on what they gave.
US has 2k Plus of these real wunderfluffes that really works and you can bet your sweet Nelly US wants to see all Russian strategic sites and AD wiped out so US will send everything over since the West is forever escalating while Putin's deathly afraid to respond directly. The bully will continue to bully in the face of weak pathetic whinings.
"It isn't exactly clear how many ATACMS the U.S. has, but Lockheed said in 2018 it had produced more than 3,850 and over 600 had been launched in combat."
So, there are *just barely* enough ATACMs produced to wipe out all of Russias' S-400 batteries at the current salvo density (assuming Russia doesn't improve its shoot down abilities in the process), thus leaving Russia with merely thousands of S-300 and S-350 batteries to fall back on...
Got it.
Total nightmare.
For NATO.
You know, it occurs to me...
Why are Ukrainians not destroying S-350, S-300, Buk, Pantsir.... is it because nobody in the Western public knows what they are? Is it because people in the West think those systems are irrelevant? But S-400 is this mythical super-system that can shoot flies out of the air in another country!
Hmm... I might be smelling PR action again. Ruskies told Sunak that if he runs *one more* Krokus attack, they'll kill him. So instead he rotated the Ukies to destroy something that passes as a millitary target.
What's your source for this?
I didn't get a notification about your comment so it took me some time to realize you posted. At any rate: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/05/now-eu-wants-to-descalate.html Furthermore, he expands on it here (includes a screenshot of Russian Foreign Ministry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCCpFeFr3w It's the first topic of discussion.
Now, granted, he didn't exactly say Sunak was personally theatened (although I remember him mentioning something to that effect recently), but then again RuFM didn't exactly say what did they talk about. And we can always expand or contract these readouts depending on our understanding of events. After all, distance from London to Moscow is 2500 km, and Kalibr has an estimated range of 1500-2500 km. If using GLONASS for navigation, it has a CEP of 2-3 meters, which is enough to hit Sunak's office table.
Lol, nice story, when did they tell? Is that why Sunak called for elections? Not that I would mind fat Starmer being killed ..
May 6th 2024. Note: they may not have specifically mentioned a decapitating strike on UK and France, but they did mention destroying UK and French stuff OUTSIDE UKRAINE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCCpFeFr3w It's the first topic, he's showing a screenshot of the website of Russian Foreign Ministry.
I think that the russians haven t come to the terms that the West is full blown bat shit crazy. They only deal with the chinesse and Iranians who are cool headed and grouded so they think that western leaders should be the same. You are right, Putin is a weak war time leader. He is extreme risk adverse.
1. Cameron says stupid shit
2. RuFM summons the UK ambassador and tells him that Russia will hit "any UK military facilities and equipment on Ukrainian territory and beyond" and requests Cameron retract his statement https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1948389/
3. Now we can discuss if UK actually did that or not, but a few days later, UK DefMin Shapps said UK doesn't want a shooting war with Russia and said Ukraine can UK weapons to strike Crimea. https://www.rt.com/news/597848-uk-shapps-doesnt-want-conflict-russia/ If you want, we can interpret him not saying anything about striking Belgorod with UK weapons as UK pulling it's permission for Ukraine to do so
---
Ultimately, you don't know how this is done.
I would further note that not all 3000 remaining are the ICM type. The actual numbers of ICM types are probably less than 1000, now. The primary production run was for the penetrating explosive warhead types, not the ICM AFAIK.
In fiscal year 2022 each ATACMS missile cost $1,478,000. They are no longer in production. Surferket's post [ below ] cites the number produced.
^
>About the ATACMS. How many were given to Ukraine?
As usual, a lot more than publicly acknowledged.
Supposedly it was "50 to 100"
But if you follow the reports from the Russian side, it has been salvos of 10-15 of those, on some days multiple salvos, for weeks now.
Then the Ukrainians are likely to be out soon.
There aren't enough ATACMs ever made for a sustained series of attacks.
Russia, unlike NATO, can easily replace its losses.
Interesting that the CNN reporter said something like those old guns are facing a new Russian invasion. Which kinda seems to indicate that it had been used against Russians in WW2, meaning they were manned by nazis then; and maybe now also....
'=^>
The US or NATO wouldn't tolerate their ICBM early warning systems being damaged or destroyed. We can all imagine the american style reaction if that ever occurred. They would just launch nukes immediately.
If I were a russian hardliner, I would be saying something to the effect of "If the west hits our ICBM detection radars again, we should deploy the strategic nuclear forces and strike all western major cities and capitals." Which I am sure there are some who do say that. Just like there are westoids who think the russian nuke missiles don't work.
Well good thing is they will potentially get their chance to test their hypothesis very soon. Hopefully they can keep themselves from screeching impotently when it lands near where they live just a little further away from immediately vaporizing them so they can feel a little bit of atomic warmth.
Maybe these are the generals that Putin had just purged. He wants peaceniks as generals. Not people like Prigo who proved right when he said the Russian MOD is all CORRUPTION.
Like Yankland, U.K. Germany etc are all upright honest well-meaning citizens?
Kike owned Yankland would have to rate as the most corrupt place on Earth from the President down .
💯
Whether all this criticism is justified or not, at least Putin genuinely cares about his people and nation.
In Washington, we've got a bunch of satanic ghouls who molest children, jail American patriots, order the military and CIA to stage color revolutions, coups, civil wars and when that fails they send American servicemen to die so they can fatten their bank accounts.
If Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley gets blasted to hell by Russian and Chinese nukes, the entire world, including most Traditional Americans would owe them a debt of gratitude.
Most of arrested generals were responsible for logistics, recruiting, military radio communication etc. Hardly combat mad dogs
^
The americans would have launch nukes right away. Americans by their nature don t fuck around. If Russia doesn t respect it s own nuclear doctrine than what that signals to the West? Putin will be to Russia what Netanyahu will be for Israel, the leaders who destroyed their countries. One being a genocidal maniac the other by being a world class pussy.
Another agent provocateur.
All we can do is pray that he manages to at least hit DC during a joint session of congress.
"The US or NATO wouldn't tolerate their ICBM early warning systems being damaged or destroyed. We can all imagine the american style reaction if that ever occurred." - that would be a pretty ugly weakness, as it would make them very easily caught in some stupid overreaction...
...like their attempt to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
Wow! Rishi wants out. It sounds like he may have an actual conscience. Who would have thought it.
Not a conscience, just a dirty rat with a keen survival instinct.
^
He probably already has plans to scurry off to a doomsday bunker in New Zealand.
We know when they arrive, we know when they leave.
Sunak was unelected anyway after Liz "It is done" Truss resigned. Graceful exit for Rishi. Maybe Dr. Jill should have some pillowtalk w/ Joe--?!!?
Was wondering that too
I wondered why was it necessary to remove Truss and Johnson... They all led the same policy
They were both anti-russian but in other areas they tended to go off-message and be generally disobedient. Perhaps their handlers wanted someone who was more N.P.C. in place.
Who knows for sure who gave Rishi "a tap on the shoulder" this week. My assessment is that it was that the Conservative Party leadership that sees two big things:
1. Downward trend in polls
2. Economy heading to prolonged recession.
They decided it was time to let Labour be in the hot seat while everything goes pear shaped and come back as saviors in 4 years.
Not everything is about this war.
Pretty much this. They also had a lot of people wanting to abandon the Tory ship and this is a way for them to reconstitute, lick their wounds and blame the other side for all the problems they will leave them with.
Removal of the Russian nuclear early warning system is an existential redline, IMO. No nuclear power would accept that situation. How to end the dismantling? I find it hard to imagine any sort of strike against Ukraine would force an end to their attacks. Overrunning the entire country would end the threat but unless we see a collapse shortly, it takes too long. A retaliation threat against the EU or the US seems the only effective response. This really could bring us to the brink.
The western ruling class seems intent on the destruction of the west. An eye for an eye for the Haulacaust? Genocide back on the table for more than just Gaza?
Another Cockwomble joins GM in being too stupid to understand how wrong they are.
My best educated guess is Putin will pretend it didn't happen. This is his historical courses of actions when real red lines got crossed. And Russia will have no Black Sea fleet left soon because they cannot be protected.
agreed,
Spamdalorian. xD
Sonner or later the damage to Russia will be so great that Putin will be forced to step down. There are powerfull forces in Russia(GRU for example) that don t like the way the war is going(remember Prigojin?). They will invent a disease story for him so he can go silentlly into the night because you can t have a weak leader în war time who doesn t uphold any red lines.
Sooner or later, Russia will dissolve. It's just a matter of perspective. ;)
Russia is wide open to a first strike, a decapitation strike from The Mediterranean and Middle East area This is super serious. They attacked Russia’s nuclear defense. Bet your ass USA would’ve launched nukes by now, but Putin’s the biggest pussy in the world. Eight years of attack on Russians, let all those weapons in no ISR strikes NATO used to kill his men and civilians. He’ll probably sweep this radar under the rug too
Fuck off whatever your intentions. You are most likely nothing more than a voyeur hating his own existence.
And YOU are generously assuming this is a human being. xD https://odysee.com/@UpperEchelonGamers:3/2024-the-year-of-political-ai:0
"Russia is wide open to a first strike, a decapitation strike from The Mediterranean and Middle East"
LOL a shit statement from S(hi)t.
Might want to have a look at this https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news-selections/world-news/flash-urgent-russia-early-warning-nuclear-missile-radar-attacked
Hal Turner? Hal Fucken Turner? LOL.
It was attacked. It was damaged. But my understanding is that it was not put out of commission.
He is entirely correct though.
And once the S-400s and other even higher value installations inside Russia proper start getting taken out, Russia will be even more open.
He is correct in the sense that it is correct to say all men are women. You see, early in embryonic development, the embryo develops into a woman. However, under the influence of androgyne hormones, the embryo gets steered into a man. So you can say all people are women, but men are men in addition to being women.
And yes, in the same sense, he's correct in saying Russia "is open".
Are you familiar with the old Soviet "dead hand" nuclear weapon launch system commonly known as "Perimeter"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
It's real Doctor Strangelove "fail deadly" stuff and it almost certainly still exists.
Yeah, we are familiar with it.
The point is to never have to use it. For which purpose it is absolutely critical for the other side to never get any ideas about being able to launch a first strike. Which means enforcing deterrence. Which has not been happening.
The fuck do you know it hasn't been happening.
What parallel reality do you live in?
How has deterrence been enforced when the other side just did something that by official doctrine should have resulted in immediate nuclear annihilation of the whole West? Which the West very much was aware of before launching that attack
I facepalmed myself.
What. The. Fuck. Do. You. Know. about these things? Do you talk to Gerasimov? Do you sip coffie at Ground Zero Caffe? Do you fuck Biden? Pillow talk with Xi? What do you know about any of this?
"Dead hand" has always been frightful. Wonder if NATO even knows about it or cares.
“Putin’s the biggest pussy in the world.” I hardly think that is a fair assessment. Of this I am sure: Every step, every waking hour, he is carrying an enormous burden of such complexity and consequence as to paralyze a lesser leader.
Putin is a lawyer (already a problem as since when nato cares about respecting any rule?).Good for business deals but a big zero in terms of military strategic decisions.
You cannot launch a decapitation strike against Russia, if one was done successfully then it simply activates Russia's dead hand system, which obviously you are oblivious too.
In the event of any decapitation strike, an automated response launching every nuke Russia has is activated
Keep in mind tho that Russians have their Container radar, which can be set up on an empty field pretty quickly, if it came down to it.
Ugh, not Container. Resonance. https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2021/08/rezonans-resonance-in-sakhalin.html
Russia is gonna lose or it goes nuclear with stupid slow rolling… whole west is attacking and feeding Ukraine missiles and shit and then when totally exhausted and out of s400s west and f35s come in and sweep Russia out
That is correct, Russia is loosing intentionally ! The whole think is a circus, just gaslighting and propaganda . There must be some backdoor deal.
Cue the Fellini soundtrack a la Nino Rota
which one?
for "I Vitelloni"
Playing the tooth saw w/ a bow
Thanks any excuse to watch this one - I'll do so and get back to you
To bad for all the dead soldiers and their families. A telenovela masquareding as a war.
That ship (not responding with a nuclear strike) has already sailed. Nothing short of nuking some NATO territory will suffice as a escalate-to-deescalate move at this point.
Trully the words of a sage. /sarc
No, he's a Cockwomble who's every other post (minimum) suggests nuclear strikes are the only way to go...
I'll wager the the Russian Senior Staff has been waiting for ages to receive this suggestion. They probably at this moment looking for your true identity so that they can pull your genius into their circle. Of course, following your advice would quickly result in a glass-plated world. But at least you could die knowing that your were right all along, yes?
Yep…Russia nuking some country will definitely de-escalate the conflict.
🤡
I’m guessing that since MoA is closed all the trolls came here to play.
How many times do people need to remember what Putin said his goals are?
THESKYISFALLINGDOWNRUNFORCOVER!
Have you thought of taking days off in some sunny resort to pacify your nerves ? What about Punta Cana or Ko Samui ? You may on top of that experience sexual encounters, again a very powerful nerve sensitive pacifier.
F35s, LOL. You mean the 29% that MIGHT actually work in combat conditions?
Russia? Totally exhausted? Sure....
I suggest that before you make any more statements exposing your ignorance, that you pull up Simplicius' write-up on attrition warfare. People like you just don't listen, or even comprehend, what kind of war is being fought here.
Whoever said "You just can't cure stupid!" was right on the mark.
" pull up Simplicius' write-up on attrition warfare"
^^^THIS^^^
Speaking as an American, we are always on the edge of our seats, wanting immediate resolution or satisfaction. (I see it in myself, unfortunately.) If not for the Soviets in WW2, all of these NeoCON assholes, now going after Russia, would be goose stepping down the Midway while 'barking' in German. Reflect on the fact that it took the Taliban and Viet Cong twenty years each to dispose of the American pests. I remember a quote, attributed to someone in the Taliban that, "you have the watches, we have the time."
I'm waiting to see if the Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans and Russians work something out, together, where they overwhelm the combined, pathetic forces these re-born western Nazis have assembled. I ordered a stick of furniture from Wayfair recently and, much to my surprise, the damn thing hit my porch in less than 24 hours after ordering. Patience friendo...Putin and his forces are not delivering furniture. They're delivering civilizational change, with a bit of help from their friends and allies. Patience...
«Speaking as an American, we are always on the edge of our seats, wanting immediate resolution or satisfaction»
Perhaps the proles -- but the "deep state" and their "sponsors", the oligarchs, can pursue goals slowly and incrementally over decades. The USSR was 100% sanctioned from 1946 until 1991, Cuba is 100% sanctioned to this day, the USA wrecked Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years, etc. etc. etc.
Just consider people like the Koch brothers or Soros: they have been also pursuing their «Speaking as an American, we are always on the edge of our seats, wanting immediate resolution or satisfaction»
Perhaps the proles -- but the "deep state" and their "sponsors", the oligarchs, can pursue goals slowly and incrementally over decades. The USSR was 100% sanctioned from 1946 until 1991, Cuba is 100% sanctioned to this day, the USA wrecked Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years, etc. etc. etc.
Just consider people like the Koch brothers or Soros: they have been also pursuing their goals for decades. goals for decades.
Thank you, Simplicius. A few points:
1. I would be more concerned if the Ukrainians/NATO had somehow caught the Russians off-guard with these provocations/escalations, but I doubt they have.
In fact, these attacks on Russian territory cannot be a huge surprise to Moscow. In my view, they are exactly what the Russians must have been expecting from Day 1. I am sure that Moscow fully expect the attacks to become even more reckless, too.
2. Ditto, given the evidence to date of excellent Russian human intelligence on the ground in Ukraine and outside it, I am confident that the Russians already have a pretty good idea of not just all NATO long range weapons systems in Ukraine, but how they are entering the country and where they are being stored.
3. The one variable worth considering is that NATO does not have an unlimited inventory of these weapons, and as your report accurately explains, they're using a lot of them to score the odd successful hit.
4. The other factor is that no AD system is infallible. Right now, in order to destroy an S350/400 with 1 missile, it seems that the same AD system accurately destroys many more. So yes - the loss of an AD system is unfortunate, but they're still very effective systems.
5. Ukraine is part of a much larger geopolitical conflict that is really stretching NATO and the collective West. There's the Middle East, of course. But also, I can't be the only one who has noticed how much more intense this new Chinese build up around Taiwan has become.
So what to make of all this?
- Consistent with their overall strategy to date, the Kremlin may have decided to accept some losses from long range strikes, in order to attrit/wear down the available NATO stocks. NATO simply doesn't have enough in the shed to keep the strikes going forever.
- Combined with this, Russia is advancing on all axes in Ukraine and this is going to make it even more difficult for NATO/Ukraine to conduct long range strikes. It already is.
- NATO (in particular the US) is in reality stretched almost to breaking point. All it takes is a major new front to open up, in particular Taiwan, and the situation becomes even more challenging. I don't have a crystal ball, but China may be building up to open that front as we speak.
End of day - while they will suffer the odd setback here an there, I remain confident that overall Russia is fully prepared for what is happening, and in fact always has been in fact (far more than NATO), and hence will prevail.
"Russia is advancing on all axes in Ukraine and this is going to make it even more difficult for NATO/Ukraine to conduct long range strikes. It already is"
--For instance, they dropped Krynky like a hot potato
Yes, pissing away entire Marine brigades, just to pretend they were attacking somewhere... that's a war winning move right there.
Krynky must have been the worst operation in the history of warfare, after the Battle of Karánsebes of course.
Well said. Realistic and to the point.
No moronic dooming and glooming as few here still do.
I amwondering where the ''Black Hole'' Submarines are. Russia has a lot of submarines and the newer ones are very good. Already proven that the Yanks can't track them.
All Russia needs to do is take out a bunch of satellites and the West goes blind. It may trigger the West but Russian could havemissiles incoming on a LOT of Western cities in the meantime.
Good point. That Belgorod is a beast.
Good point. Could start taking out satellites as response to taking out early warning systems.
They have hundreds if not thousands of sats good luck with that and in retaliation they will destroy all RU sats.
"They have hundreds if not thousands of sats"
That's not a reality-based comment. The US has about 250 military satellites, but only a dozen or less of the multibillion dollar Keyhole high resolution reconnaissance satellites. It takes the US years to replace one at huge cost: "According to US Senator Kit Bond initial budget estimates for each of the two legacy KH-11 satellites ordered from Lockheed in 2005 were higher than for the latest Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (CVN-77) with its projected procurement cost of $6.35 billion as of May 2005." Expect $8 to $10 billion today. The US's 11 active aircraft carriers cost less than the US's Keyhole satellites.
China and Russia both have about 150 military satellites each and then the UK/France both have about 20 each.
However, satellite-killing technology is far from even: China and Russia are ahead of the US, and have tested satellite-killing weapons that have proven to be highly effective. The US has some anti-satellite weapons, but those are not as advanced as Russia's.
Vulnerability is also uneven: the US's Keyhole satellites are huge systems full of very fragile components (like the mirror optics) that are sitting ducks for very inexpensive weapons: launch a cloud of a few kilograms of small ball bearings at the satellite and it will die. Russia's satellites are simpler systems that are smaller and harder to kill. It's true the US also has many smaller satellites, but Russia also has weapons to attack those.
There is also a replacement asymmetry: when Russia starts shooting down US satellites the US can only launch replacements from limited sites using highly limited launch systems. Those are easy to destroy in many different ways (a single, small drone with a few kilos of high explosive will easily destroy a fully-fueled missile on the launch pad, significantly damaging the pad as well) because US launch facilities are relatively near civilian population centers. Russia's launch facilities tend to be very far away from civilian population centers and are far harder to reach with covert attacks. It is true that over time both the US and Russia would lose all launch facilities in a general war, however Russia will still be able to launch satellites from the many mobile ICBM platforms it has.
Finally, the US depends far more on its satellites for waging conventional wars than Russia does. Especially in the earlier stages of the blinding process, taking out the US's Keyhole satellites and several dozens of smaller satellites with orbits over Europe would have a dramatic effect on the US/NATO/nazi coalition's ability to wage war in Europe and Russia.
The Hubble was a modified KH sat. Not exactly something to be mass-produced. With that said, photo recon is not the only thing satellites do.
I remember someone saying cameras were on all the Starlink sats. Probably are, for all the good that will do.
"I remember someone saying cameras were on all the Starlink sats. Probably are, for all the good that will do." I hadn't heard that, but I'm not surprised to hear it. After all, putting a camera into a gadget these days is near-zero cost.
But the problem with using cameras on Starlink stats for recon is the basic physics involved in achieving militarily useful resolution. The basic laws of physics involved in achieving resolution at a given scale are as fixed as the speed of light, and derive from the basic wave nature of light, hence the famous "diffraction limit" that pops up in discussions of the maximum resolution theoretically possible from Keyhole satellites.
You just can't generate an image that provides militarily useful recon information from a small device that is high up enough from dense atmosphere (and thus far from the earth's surface) not to have an orbit that decays too fast, around 320 to 340 miles or so for Starlink.
You could do all sorts of useful remote sensing with smaller cameras, of course, such as monitoring weather, cloud cover, ocean temperatures, crop and land cover with big (1 km) pixels and such. Given the near-zero cost of adding a camera chip to a Starlink satellite that might be why the cameras are there. But keeping track of military assets, even ship sized ones, is not in the cards for a small optics camera at a height of around 330 miles.
You could, in theory, do long-base interferometry calculations to get higher resolution from simultaneous views from a constellation of satellites, but the technical difficulty of doing that with a constellation like Starlink looks like it would be far less expensive to just launch a satellite with bigger optics. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the US had positioned a couple of the Keyhole satellites for such experiments.
By the way, I always thought of the KH sats as being a modified Hubble, given that some of them used spare Hubble mirrors "donated" by NASA. :-) I guess it's a true chicken or egg situation with Hubble and KH.
The Hubble was a derivative of the NRO KH-11.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
For starters, there were way more KH sats than Hubbles... The Webb may reflect some enhancements in the NRO program, though the shift away from visible wavelengths may indicate otherwise.
I agree about the Starlink cameras, and you clearly understand the optical issues involved. I wish more did. Less paranoia.
I don't doubt that ideas of using interferometry with the KH-series have been examined, but I also don't think enough platforms are up at any one time to do all that much in that area. These things are tremendously expensive and orbital mechanics being what they are, aren't always in the place you want them to be.
«launch a cloud of a few kilograms of small ball bearings at the satellite and it will die. Russia's satellites are simpler systems that are smaller and harder to kill.»
The obvious way to get rid of a satellite is not to destroy it, which is easily detected and causes problems, but to push it out of orbit or destabilize it, for example by making it spin. Whether the satellite is fragile or hardened. Some have attitude stabilizers, but they have very limited fuel.
Excellent points Scipio
^
Thank you for a closely reasoned and critically thought-out answer. This thread was descending into total "Enemy at the Gates" hysteria. It's war. Russia was always going to take some serious hits. Now back to the attrition.
"- NATO (in particular the US) is in reality stretched almost to breaking point. All it takes is a major new front to open up, in particular Taiwan, and the situation becomes even more challenging. I don't have a crystal ball, but China may be building up to open that front as we speak."
Not necessarily. That woke faggot who became their new president last week only won 40% of the votes in a three way contest but the two other parties control the legislature and are opposed to antagonizing China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI9OJO10MG8
If it looks like war might be inevitable the dissident Kuomintang Party would send gangsters to assassinate all the secessionists while their elements in the military would stage a coup and declare reunification with China.
Reasons I believe this would be the most likely scenario? Taiwan's largest trading partner happens to be China. After seeing how the West is using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder I suspect the people of Taiwan would prefer continued trade to getting dragged into World War 3.
https://www.worldstopexports.com/taiwans-top-import-partners/
I actually don't understand why domestically they haven't agreed to a Hong Kong style reunification already. Negotiate when you have something to offer, for pete's sake. You'll get a better deal now.
Regarding Hong Kong........the protests a few years ago was fomented by the CIA front NGO, National Endowment for Democracy, in an attempt to destabilize the Hong Kong government and foment a color revolution.
Unlike Ukraine, Hong Kong is an island which makes funneling arms and military advisors for another Maiden type coup impossible to pull off.
What wasn't being reported is that most of Hong Kong's citizens were opposed to the unrest.
Also, the MSM trying to label the riots as a reaction to Beijing violating the autonomy of the HK government was nonsense. If that were the case, they would've just sent in the PLA's People's Armed Police.
Steering this back to Taiwan....the former President of Taiwan who ruled under the banner of the Kuomintang Party recently visited President Xi in order to facilitate more cross straits tourism with visits to each other's historical sites and museums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvhxZJY8wGU
There is zero evidence that there is any willingness on either side for war but Washington's attempts to turn Taiwan into an unsinkable aircraft carrier as a dagger pointed at China's southern flank will never be acceptable to the CCP.
I agree that Taiwan is not as "anti China" as the West and the secessionists would like. It is not widely known that over 2 million Taiwanese are permanently living on the mainland, and that there are several hundred thousand cross strait marriages. Moreover, a majority of Taiwanese has ancestry and/or kin on the mainland, and Chinese are very ancestry focused people.
While most Taiwanese would prefer the status quo, few are willing to die for the West or the corrupt DPP apparachiks.
As you pointed out, the large volume of travel across the Straits indicate that neither side perceives the other to be any sort of threat to national security.
Beijing is willing to maintain the status quo since both sides know they they will eventually reunify sometime in the future which is why the U.S. is desperately trying to create a schism and derail that.
It's all so wasteful and unnecessary because even if Taiwan had aspirations for independence but were to pull away from the West's orbit and promised not to allow any foreign military forces onto it's waterways and land which can be used to launch hybrid warfare against China, Beijing could probably live with that.