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.
Remember all the professionally incompetent yo-yo naval officers & hangers on claiming FPV drones were not a threat to naval warships in 2023 WHEN I TOLD THEM THEY WOULD BE?
Reality just kicked them one and all in the 'nads...
I told these professionally incompetent US navalists accounts on X/Twitter in 2023 that both containerized drones and FPV drones were a deadly threat to every naval vessel on the water they were ignoring to their crew's peril.
We need to have a talk about Russian military corruption and its effects on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
It's kind of like these sun-rotted missile truck tires that make my reputation on Twitter.
Corruption happens slowly, then all at once.
Corruption🧵 1/
The Russian Army issued a "live off the land" order in early March 2022 resulted in lots of Russian enlisted stealing outside the line of sight of Russian junior officers.
This hollowed out discipline the RuAF "Professional Volunteers" in early 2022.
More information has come out on the FP-5 Flamingo which gives insights io both the systems and production engineering involved for low cost production.
I'm going to use the WW2 F6F Hellcat & M4 Sherman as examples of Ukrainian FP-5 design choices.
The FP-5 GLCM production photos released today shows what looks like a combination of carbon fiber composite, molded thermoplastics, and sheet metal.
Cruciform tail controls are all moving.
Wings are attached before launch like a 1960s USAF MGM-1 Matador. 2/
The FP-5 Transporter Erector Launch (TEL) trailer looks like a new custom build.
Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point, stated to the AP that "Fire Point is producing roughly one Flamingo per day, and by October they hope to build capacity to make seven per day."
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.
2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.
3/
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden
This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...