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Thomas C. Theiner

@noclador

Jun 7

I will dwell on this video of a Ukrainian M109 section coming under russian fire a little bit longer:

Once you start laying out ammo behind your self-propelled howitzer you signal to the russian drone operator: "I am gonna stay here for a while."

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This obviously allows the russians to calmly get an Uragan or Smerch multiple rocket launcher into position to hit you.

So don't ever do that! This is why the M109 stores 36 rounds inside! You load the ammo and charges outside of enemy rocket range, then you drive into the

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@UAWeapons

combat zone, and shoot and scoot, shoot and scoot - for up to 6x times. This way you don't give the russians the time to shoot back, even if they spot you with a drone.

Luckily the russians fired cluster munitions at the 4x M109. As @UAWeapons pointed out likely a

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Thomas C. Theiner

@noclador

Jun 6

Re. weapon deliveries to Ukraine 🇺🇦 - only two categories of weapons can be sent:

• older ones that a western military doesn't need anymore or
• new ones, where production is still ongoing

No military can send wespons it needs, if they can't be replaced.
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Examples for older weapons sent to Ukraine:

• 🇳🇴 had already replaced its M109A3GN howitzers with K9 Thunder
• 🇪🇸 is replacing its SPADA 2000 air defense system with NASAMS II
• 🇺🇸 Marine Corps bought too many M777 and so could donate 108 to Ukraine

2/n

Examples for new weapons sent to Ukraine:

• 🇫🇷 CAESAR
• 🇵🇱 AHS Krab
• 🇸🇰 Zuzana 2
• 🇺🇸 M142 HIMARS
• 🇺🇸 Stinger
• 🇺🇸 Javelin
• 🇬🇧 NLAW
• 🇬🇧 Brimstone
• 🇩🇰 Harpoon
• 🇹🇷 Bayraktar TB2

All of these are in production and whatever is sent can easily be replaced.
3/n

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Thomas C. Theiner

@noclador

Jun 5

https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1533346132029579264

Leopard 2A4 for Ukraine are nice (unless Scholz will veto them... which is likely).

The interesting part is the Spada 2000 air defense battery, which Spain donates to Ukraine. That battery is immediately operational (unlike Germany's promised IRIS-T SLM battery), and Italy

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https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1533346132029579264

still produces the semi-active radar homing Aspide 2000 missile, which has a range of 25+ km.

Spain uses the modern RAC-3D radar, but the battery consists of just 2x fire sections of 2x launchers with 6x missiles.

Photos: an Austrian RAC-3D and two Italian launchers
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As radar and fire sections need to be within a radius of 10 km the Spanish battery will cover just a small part of the Donbas front (Photo 1).

Italy bought 96 launchers, so Ukraine & Spain should ask Italy to donate at least two launchers for a third fire section (Photo 2).

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Thomas C. Theiner

@noclador

Jun 5

Just watched an interview with the head of the German Armed Forces - some really interesting points: about the €100 billion "Sondervermögen" investment and about the PzH 2000 and Ukraine.

The German Luftwaffe is getting €40.9 ($43.84 billion)

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on top of its regular procurement budget. To compare: the US Air Force's procurement budget for 2022 and 2023 is $48.6 billion.

Besides American F-35A, P-8A Poseidon, and CH-47F Chinook, also more Eurofighter and a new Eurofighter ECR variant will be acquired.

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Also MEADS air defense systems, tanker aircraft, transport aircraft, etc. All this will turn the Luftwaffe in Europe's biggest air force by far.

It's clear that the focus is on the Luftwaffe, as Marine & Heer are just getting more of the stuff they planned to order anyway.

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Thomas C. Theiner

@noclador

Jun 3

I was asked if russians can jam GMLRS missiles.

Sure... with a hammer... while the missile is in mid flight.

And if they don't have Thor's Mjolnir at hand - jamming gravity, light, and electricity in the universe are russia's other options. A thread 🧵

1/n

No soley GPS-guided missile exists. All guided missiles contain an Inertial Navigation System (INS). INS results are then refined by adding GPS measurements.

GMLRS missile INS computations (below schematic, but without GPS input) are based on the inertial angular velocity
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measurements of 3x gyroscopes, which determine the orientation of 3x accelerometers. In turn the accelerometers' measurements are used to estimate the missile's velocity and position.

Sorry, this is so technical - I am trying to keep it simple, but INS are a highly complex

3/n

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Thomas C. Theiner

@noclador

Jun 1

russian trolls in my mentions: "You're afraid to compare the M270 and M142 to the super-modern russian Tornado (G/U/S) launchers!"

Fine, let's have a laugh 🧵

1) Tornado-G is an "update" of the BM-21 Grad that still needs to be loaded by hand.

1/n

The Tornado-G has a GLONASS receiver and can be aimed and fired from the cabin... but no guided rockets exist for it and the rockets have just 25-30% of the range of GMLRS missiles. And as the targeting computer doesn't always work - the russians had to re-add optical sights.
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2) The Tornado-U doesn't exist. You read that on wikipedia, didn't you? There is an Uragan-1M, of which in 8 years only 6x were built. It can fire Uragan and Smerch missiles (as in the photo). Do guided Uragan missiles exist? Nope.

For this one the russians copied the
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