The Soviet Union produced 10,000 KS-19 anti-aircraft guns from 1948 to 1957. They have a range of up to 21 km and at an altitude of up to 15 km at air targets with a flight speed of up to 1200 km/h.
The guns were finally removed from Army service in the 1980's and were
2/6
... used to start avalanches in mountain passes and resorts inside Russia by the "Roshydromet" (Russian Hydrometeorological Service).
Removing them from the Roshydromet to provide artillery support in Ukraine 3/6
...is not the move of a Russian military flush with 122mm and 152 mm artillery shells.
The KS-19's 100mm shells don't fit into the 100mm MT-12 anti-tank gun.
So to use those shells, the Russian military had to denude Russian mountain passes and resorts of these guns.
4/6
This would be like the US Army going to Washington state and taking its avalanche control M-60 tanks to shoot available 105mm high velocity tank gun shells.
Such a thing would be done only in dire military emergency.
It looks like the Kharkiv Oblast break-in point chosen by Ukraine was so lightly held that any serious mechanized force would blow through it like tissue paper with no local reserves behind the lines to stop it.
This means the Ukrainian forces involved could be as small as 1/7
...a Ukrainian reinforced tank or mechanized brigade could be involved in this offensive. (H/T @battle_order)
This points up a real problem with Russian intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets versus Ukraine's integrated air defenses.
2/7
Russia has to be allocating its drone ISR assets across the whole of the vast Ukrainian front line – Kherson first first, then Donbass, then dribs to the rest of the front.
And Ukraine is Texas sized. (GMLRS/ATACMS map by @ameliairheart)
@kamilkazani gave us all an early May 2022 thread which included this infographic tweet explaining how Russian forces of the "Putin Imperium" are structured.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense counts Russian Army, Wagner, Chechin & the LNR/DNR colonial militias as "Russian."
Now compare that 28 Aug 2022 Russian Ministry of Finance 48,838 CONFIRMED Russian Army-only deaths #'s with Ukraine's 5 Sept. 2022 #'s for all Russian forces. 3/
It remains to be seen if the Ukrainian military has enough local mobile forces to make this into an operational scale breakthrough offensive that cuts the Russian ground lines of communications to Izyum.
2/4
The only rapidly available tool for the Russians appears to be airpower.
The Russians have to commit the VKS in a big way to slow this Ukrainian break-in down and helicopter lift infantry blocking forces in front of the Ukrainians to save their logistical position at Izyum.
3/4
This should not be surprisings, since Ukraine's information operations pulled lots of Russian strategic & operational reserve ground forces to Kherson.
Then cut them off.
This has allowed Ukraine to exploit its interior lines of communications at Kharkiv with no Russian 1/5
...reserves available to counter attack and seal the breach in Russian lines.
Ukraine's GMLRS delivered "Follow on Forces Attack" (FOFA) advantage has put Russia in the classic "He who defends everywhere, defends nothing" position.
2/5
The Russian military has committed most of its available reserves and has to stop attacks elsewhere to be able to respond to this new Ukrainian offensive at Kharkiv.
And someone in the Russian army has to tell Putin and get him to believe the bad news without getting shot.
3/5
Kherson & the new Kharkiv offensive are being done incrementally both to minimise 🇺🇦 losses & to present a diffuse force at the forward edge battle area (FEBA) that provides no tempting targets for Russian tactical nukes 1/