This thread is going to discuss what the loss by capture of Russian Army Pantsyr S1/S2 / SA-22 (pictured below), 2S6 Tunguska / SA-19, Osa AKM / SA-8B, Tor M2 / SA-15, Strela 10 / SA-13 means for the Russian invasion of Ukraine going forward. Its bad🧵 1/
...for the Russians and particularly the Russian Air Force.
BTW, that list of captured Russian Army short range air defense (SHORAD) gear comes from this link to all the documented equipment losses in the war to date. 2/ oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack…
This is a Russian Army TOR M2 surface-to-air missile complex that was captured intact by Ukrainian farmers.
You can be certain that the Ukrainian SF have showed up with technical experts to rape it's technical information for the UAF.
I am part of a group weblog called Chicagoboyz where I've posted updates on the Latest Russian
Invasion of Ukraine twice.
One of the people in the second post commented on the huge implications for Russian communications security (COMSEC) & Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) 4/
Modern IFF is part coded digital radio, part radar and part air traffic control beacon.
Each piece of IFF gear has a list of codes that are used at predetermined & programed intervals.
In wartime these are changed one or more times a day. 5/
The compromise of Russian IFF answers the question everyone have been asking -- "Where is the Russian Air Force."
See:
"The United States estimates that Russia is using just over 75 aircraft in its Ukraine invasion, the senior U.S. official said."
The failure to destroy these missile complexes & their abandonment in operational condition means the Ukrainians have both those IFF codes & remote ports into the Russian air defense computer networks.
Short form: Ukraine can hack Russian integrated air defense systems(IADS).7/
This is a Chicagoboyz comment specifically detailing how badly hurt the Russians were by the abandonment of an intact Pantsir air defense vehicle by "Kirk," who is ex-US military & hangs out in the comment sections there:
The Russian sorties after the 3rd day of the war have switched into set piece assaults on to Ukrainian civilian infrastructure after trying to hit Ukrainian mobile forces, particularly in the south.
This would be consistent with a compromised air defense network where the Russians have to do a ponderous "deconfliction" process to make sure Russian ground-to-air missiles don't target their own strike aircraft.
Additionally, the UAF possession of Russian IFF code settings for the operation means their radars can trigger Russian IFF at extreme distances outside skin-paint radar range for tracking.
In essence, the Ukrainians can engage in aerial "doxing" of Russian aircraft.
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The Ukrainian Air Force does not have A-50 AWACS radar tracking planes like the RuAF, but being able to Dox Russian aircraft IFF is almost as good.
Actually, the Soviet Union in the "Great Patriotic War" did suffer worse casualties and win.
It is that fact which powers the "Russian WW2 exceptionalism" myth that Putin used to zombify Russians over 20 years to make suicidal assaults over and over again.
Historic war mobilization production curves are heavily back loaded.
That is, the production rates of B-17's and B-24's bombers in the 3rd quarter of 1943 versus the 3rd quarter of 1944 showed a much higher production rate in late 1944.
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We are mid-way through the 3rd quarter of the 2025 where Ukraine's OWA drone annual production goal was 40,000.
Ukraine should be around 850-950 OWA drones a week in August 2025 and will be close to 1,200 a week in the 4th qtr. of the 2025.
Both polities had monumental hubris, the conviction that all was permitted, and that they were invincible.
The committed Nazis still believed they were winning in March-April 1945.
Japanese 'Yamato-damashii' beliefs took nukes to break.
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This Russian exceptionalist belief in the immunity to the consequences of their own actions is also why the Russians continue their insane suicidal assaults.
What is interesting for me is that the pre-2022 Western intelligence assessments of the Russian Army credited it with lots of tactical pipelines to move fuel.
Those would be far more useful in moving water than trucks...yet...where are they?
These pipelines seem to have fallen into that same logistical 'assume they exist but don't' black hole as Russian truck D-rings & pallets, tactical truck trailers, and Russia's "superior" tooth to tail ratio that acts more like 1863 Union Army where...
2/
..."every soldier is a logistical manual laborer when not in combat".
Water is heavy. Pipelines are more efficient that trucks. Yet all we are seeing is Russian water trucks?
Who stole the Russian Army tactical pipelines? Or were they nothing but disinformation?
3/3
While we are getting Western intelligence assessments that continue to point out Russia's vast increases in production of military materiel, especially tanks, IFVs and APCs (from the same people who claimed Russia would over run Ukraine in 3-to-5 days)
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...claiming Russia is "obviously winning."
We are at the same time seeing economic signs of Russian "End Run Production."
The Russian wartime economy is functioning hand to mouth with oil sales revenues because all of the foreign exchange reserves are spent or frozen.
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