Ukrainian media is reporting the shoot down of a VKS A-50 AEW&C and a Il-22 Coot ELINT plane over the Sea of Azov.
Russian signals intelligence warnings shut down the Kerch Bridge earlier in the day, thinking the PSU sorties were a Su-24 strike.
🧵 1/ rbc.ua/rus/news/zsu-p…
I think it likely the PSU gave off the signals of a Su-24 Storm Shadow strike and actually sent out Su-27's hunting, tricked out with 100(+) km range AIM-120C's.
Think of the WW2 "Operation Vengeance" P-38 raid that killed Adm. Yamamoto.
It would give a single Ukrainian PSU Su-27 a chance to break within 100 km and blarf a volley of lock on after launch AMRAAM against these converted cargo & airliner planes.
5/
The US fighter pilots don't like 'pitbulling' the AMRAAM when they "Fox 3."
That is, firing a AIM-120 seeker in the lock on after launch (LOAL) with missile seeker doing autonomous homing at range.
This is because there tends to be more US fighters than enemy fighters.
6/
To use ~2008 fighter pilot slang:
"Shake a pitbull up in a sack and when you let out. It's goes for the first thing it sees.
In which case, you have a 'mad dog' event."
A PSU Su-27 fighting one on many doesn't have this issue.
7/
Ukraine could only pull this AMRAAM Ambush once.
They decided to make a high operational risk/high operational pay off poker bet and won the pot.
8/8 End
@threadreaderapp unroll please.
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The process was invented by a Russian, Via wikipedia:
"The Russian chemist Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev was the first to polymerize butadiene in 1910....
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...In 1926 he invented a process for manufacturing butadiene from ethanol, and in 1928, developed a method for producing polybutadiene using sodium as a catalyst.
The government of the Soviet Union strove to use polybutadiene as an alternative to natural rubber ...
3/
That War Department technical manual codified how the US Army would apply mechanized logistics - pallets, forklifts and warehousing using same - world wide.
But as the figure I used above noted, Ukraine is mostly flat and that is bad for DSMAC accuracy.
An analysis of the data bases of downed Shaheds will yield the landmarks these drones are using.
That data, plus an AI analysis of past Shahed trajectories in GNSS jammed...
2/
...areas, plus maps of Ukrainian cell phone tower networks that Shahed SIM cards access, should allow operational analysis predictions of future Shahed landmark checkpoints to set up quick reaction Ukrainian TDF mobile AA gun "flak traps."
The British Army in WW2 need it's "Phantom" or "J-Service" to listen to its own army's radio circuits to get accurate reports to senior leaders that were slow and...call it...garbled on the way to senior leadership.
The WW2 US Army duplicated this practice and created a dedicated radio units called SIAM - Signal Information and Monitoring - whose sole mission was to monitor the radio traffic of US units for violations of signal procedures and cipher security.
2/
Ukraine's use of landlines and Starlink in lieu of point to point HF/VHF/UHF radio to beat Russian electronic warfare will require something very different than a WW2 British J-Service or US Army SIAM platoon.
3/3
OSINT & Western intelligence now needs to be looking for mass deployments of Chinese 21st century prefabricated Mulberry harbor equivalents.⬇️
2/
The @thinkdefence article on the Expeditionary Elevated Causeway (ELCAS) will give anyone caring to look an idea of what to be searching for in Chinese ports and military exercises.