"However, Ukraine has no effective options to counter a prolonged Russian artillery offensive. This should trouble those who want to see Ukraine prevail as Russia can rely upon an extensive supply of artillery platforms and munitions that it...
3/
... will likely use to lay waste to large swaths of eastern Ukraine and thwart a Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake the country."
The lack of Russian artillery ammunition in Russia's response to Ukraine's Izyum counter-attacks is a 'tell' this assumption isn't true.
4/
There are several different sources confirming these Ukrainian counter-offensives.
Izyum is the stated "schwerpunkt" of the Russian Donbas offensive.
If there is anywhere in Ukraine that should have megatons of Russian artillery ammunition. It is at Izyum.
Yet, nada versus the two Ukrainian bulges attempting to pocket Izyum.
8/
I think the unchallenged Western intelligence assumption that Russian has near inexhaustible reserves of artillery ammunition needs to be torn down to the foundation, frame studs, baseboards & reexamined with the eye that assumption is the same class as Putin would not invade
End
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The industrial manpower hours of resurrecting a 1960's T-62M with a 40 years dead OEM industrial base are just🤯
Reset/rebuilding tactical vehicle fleets gets more and more expensive towards the end as the oldest vehicles with the fewest spares are all that's left.
2/
And Turtle Tank/Shed Tanks/Blyat Mobiles like that T-72B @AndrewPerpetua listed are built because they lack traverse and elevation parts for the main gun.
Making a shed tank means a number, a production metric, for which T & E parts are not needed.
The 2016 era planned Ukrainian A2AD munitions capabilities were to be as follows:
Vilkha 300mm GMLRS 180 km,
Neptun derivative GLCM/ALCM 300+ km,
Hrim 2 TBM ~400 km,
Korshun GLCM [a Tomahawk GLCM lookalike] at 1000+ km.
3/
The PSU Su-24MR [FENCER E] was to be given a long range Shtyk side looking radar (SLAR) to play "Mini-JSTARS," as well as 100 km long range visual band cameras, to be a "ISR-strike complex."
The Russo-Ukrainian War cycle time between drone control frequency changes and jammers for the new frequencies had been two weeks.
It used to take something like 20 weeks for a US theater commander to properly staff out such a EW procurement request with all the Congressional bells and whistles.
1/
US Electronic warfare used to be better:
"In all, over 300 quick reaction capability efforts were initiated during the Vietnam War. The U. S. counter-countermeasure systems developed and installed in 1966 and 1967...
...included radar and missile guidance warning receivers, jammers and deception repeaters, standoff jamming by support aircraft, chaff, and anti-radiation missiles."
3/
It utterly sickens me that senior US Army flag ranks got rid of 4,500 MRAPs in 2013 because they thought there was no conceivable use for a fast wheeled troop transport, armored against mines, in a medium intensity war.
Flag rank leadership in medium intensity warfare🧵 1/
We have a generation of "forward operating base" flag ranks running the US Army like UK had "Imperial policing" army flag ranks vs Japanese bicycle logistics at Malaya in 1942.
Medium intensity war was outside both their frames of reference.
Calo Kopp's "Parasitism as an Abstraction for Organisational Dysfunctions" makes for bracing reading on the Flag rank organizational dysfunction leading to the UK surrender at Singapore
A lot of Western analysts haven't noticed Iran has both deployed & exported a jet powered drone as an anti-drone munition against high altitude long endurance drones.
This is utter bad news for Western airborne/helicopter assault/marine infantry.
The Iranian 358 loitering drone that can kill a MQ-1 at up 25,000 altitude, can also kill a UH-60 or a V-22 delivering troops or a C-130 dropping paratroopers.
100% of all Western VTOL or fixed wing troop carriers will need a blinding laser infrared countermeasures system.
2/
The Iranian 358 loitering munition debuted in 2020 in numbers with a highly publicized specific anti-US Special Forces MV-22 Osprey mission in the marketing.
_BEFORE_ the jet powered US Coyote Block 2 anti-drone munition was deployed.