My analysis of Afrin Liberation Forces footage of a series of ATGM attacks against Turkish/Turkish backed militia positions around Jindires (Afrin region - N. Aleppo).
It shows a 7 Metis-pattern ATGMs fired in quick succession.
The Assads regime is known to be the main supplier of ATGMs (mostly 9M113 Konkurs) to the ALF in the past, with the only realistic alternative being small purchases of various ATGMs from corrupt pro-Turkey rebel groups.
The number of ATGMs used in this attack indicates that ALF recently received a new substantial shipment of Metis-pattern ATGM from the regime.
What seems to be more interesting is that based on the observed time-of-flight (up to 12 seconds) ATGMs used appear to be 9K115-2 Metis-M1 which entered the service in the Russian Army only relatively recently (March 2016) - previous versions of Metis have shorter time-of-flight.
So, it appears that the Assad regime has been supplied with 9K115-2 Metis-M1 ATGMs by Russia and in turn, they (likely with the knowledge/approval of Russia) have supplied the ALF with these modern ATGMs so they can be used against Turkish forces and their proxy forces in Afrin.
The question now is whether Turkey will decide to retaliate (especially if these ATGM attacks escalate) and if so whether it will be by further arming rebel groups in Idlib, or by more direct action(s) against the Assad regime.
As usual, there are a bunch of problems with this CNN report: 1. The Russian figure is supposed to be all-calibers while the Western figure is 155mm only - The Russian equivalent (152mm) is around half of those 3M.
2. Western artillery supplied to Ukraine is more accurate - so you need fewer rounds to achieve the same effect
3. NATO artillery ammo production will narrow that gap by late 2024 and if the US Congress approves the military aid package for Ukraine, which contains money for further ammo production expansion, NATO production is likely to match the Russian production around late 2025
/Thread/Rant/
About expanding the Ukrainian mobilization and gross incompetence in the management of some parts of the military:
1. Delaying expanding mobilization because it will be unpopular is beyond idiotic - you will still need to do it later anyway and by delaying the decision you will meanwhile take more casualties and lose more territory than you otherwise would
because understrength units will take more casualties.
In fact, severely understrength units are at risk of collapsing - just like Russian units did in Kharkiv in September 2022.
Everyone delaying expanding the mobilization is at best a short-sighted idiot.
This is the important point - given the prevalence of GPS jamming and SpaceX only knowing the approximate location of terminals, SpaceX can either provide service coverage over the frontline which means also Russians who are close to UA positions, or not provide service to anyone in the area.
And figuring out which terminals are operated by Russians and which by Ukrainians is non-trivial. If you want to avoid accidentally cutting off UA units from service, you can't afford to make mistakes.
This is the approximate size of a Starlink coverage cell if you center it in the center of Avdiivka - so if you want Ukrainians there to have coverage, Russians within ~12km will also be able to use Starlink terminals they have there.
to rebuild its forces enough to even begin to contemplate ideas about even a limited clash with NATO, but the theory it presents is pretty much just a wish for the (much more powerful) opponent to just give up
and some of those theoretical arguments have already turned out to have failed in Ukraine, so depending on them would be beyond idiotic.
1. Since most of the US ground forces would have a minimal role to play against China and the USAF asset reallocation would be limited by what airbases in the region would be made available
by the US allies plus the availability of tanker aircraft, I consider that scenario to not give a good opportunity to Russia in Europe - the more scary and plausible scenario would be a POTUS who is hostile to enforcing NATO A5.
Your regular reminder that Starlink is a usually (unless obtained as ITAR-restricted version) a civilian service with terms of service that ban integrating terminals into weapons. Musk is often behaving like a fool but 99.9% of Starlink terminals were unaffected by restrictions.