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.
This Ukrainian fiber optic FPV drone attack underlines that 20th century style tactical truck based logistics are obsolete in the age of mass, cheap, 50 km FPV drones.
Drones costing less than $2,000 are killing trucks costing over $150,000.
The issue of Western truck production versus drone production is stark
Ukraine in 2025 is making ~12,000 FPV and grenade dropping class small drones a month.
The peak annual US Army FMTV production was in 2005 for a total of 8,168 trucks.
Those trucks are 20 years old.
2/
21st Century truck logistics in the age of 50 km unjammable fiber optic guided FPV drones requires systematic combat service support engineering to build vehicle "net tunnels" to protect from powered and persistent drones.
Injection molding gets you a lot of one thing cheaply. Think lots of fiber optic guided FPV drones, which are immune to radio jamming.
3D/AM allows a lot of modifications to meet the changing requirements of war. Think rapidly evolving Ukrainian interceptor drone designs.
2/
The issue for Ukraine versus Russia is Ukraine has to more widely disperse its industrial base because Russia has a bigger cruise and 500 km(+) ballistic missile production base.
Ukraine's need to disperse production and evolve drones means 3D/AM is a better industrial fit.
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The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.
2/
So the US military abandoned kinetic solutions the lower end drone threat.
And it has to pretend that high power microwave weapons and jamming will be the answer to fiber optic guided FPV's at weed height and grenade dropping drones behind tree lines.
The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
2/
The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.
It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.
Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.
Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.
And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮
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"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.
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