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.
11/
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.
I don't doubt that Ukraine cyber hacked in Russian digital terrain elevation maps that the Russians compiled for themselves. Up to date digital terrain elevation maps are a good thing to have.
Plus NASA also had a huge archive of digital terrain elevation data.
War with Iran has kicked off and both the Trump Adm. and Israel have gone for Iranian Regime change with oil export, leadership decapitation, air defense & Iranian missile site strikes.
"The U.S. strikes are focused on Iran’s missile program and missile launchers. The Israeli strikes are focused on eliminating senior Iranian officials and on the missile program"
Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al-Salem Base in Kuwait, Al-Dhafra Air Base in the Emirates, and the US Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain were all reportedly hit by IRGC Ballistic missiles.
"Preliminary reports suggest the UAV was likely launched from an Iranian naval vessel — a move that would significantly extend its operational range and time over target."
This means the world has changed so radically that any US Army officer higher than Captain is negative value added on a drone battlefield because their professional military education is as obsolete 1930's US Horse cavalrymen Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures were in 1944.
The problem for an independent EU nuclear deterrence force is sheer numbers, the EU lack of them.
What the Putinists have proven is that Western deterrence assumptions about "acceptable losses" were naive mirrored thinking, attributing Western values to Russia.
The assumption of credible "deterrent effect" has to be shifted into the loss band of annihilation of threat forces - anything less than that, as the Ukraine war proves, is an acceptable loss for the Putinists.
We are at over a million Russian casualties to date.
That means a 200 kiloton nuke in either St. Petersburg or Moscow, or dozens of tactical nukes into airfields & missile fields across Western Russia as an EU nuclear response to a Russian first strike are acceptable at a minimum.
It looks like my 4th Gen nukes posts here on X shook out data from US three letter agencies. Who belatedly realized that classifying physics was both self-defeating & stupid.
The bad news is the FYEO web site is now reporting a _NINTH_ 4th Gen. nuclear tech approach by China with metal nitrogen/nitrogen anion salt.
Specifically, this new Chinese approach to 4th generation nukes that create fusion device without a HEU/PU fission trigger can be packaged as small as 100 to 200 grams and can fit into a group two size class drone.
My worst-case 4th Generation nuclear scenario was based on explosively pumped flux compression generator fusion primaries with U-238 jackets in something sized to fit into an ATACMS warhead.