The Armed Forces of Ukraine have launched a up to 25K, or small NATO Corps sized, incursion into the Kursk Oblast that is moving between 7 & 10 km a day.
AFU Bde have between 4 to 9 battalions per brigade with 6 Bn as average, so ~18 Bn seem involved.
AFU's Strategic raid🧵 1/
US made and AFU crewed Stryker & Humvees are in Russia as a part of an AFU multi-domain - that is, air and ground - offensive.
A RuAF conscript regiment -- doing animal labor logistics - was thrown at the assault and shattered. Chechens ran.
Russia's reserves are airpower. 2/
What has been particularly interesting has been the further demonstration of the floating 10 km "FPV Motor Transport Kill Bubble" that extend around AFU Drone-ground teams that has picked off a pair of RuAF tank transporter convoys behind the border.
And the distances involved - 150 km - from Kursk to Vovchansk are operational-strategic in scope.
This makes me think we are looking at a Ukrainian strategic level raid aimed at placing Russia in a nested series of logistical dilemma's in order to give AFU the initiative.
8/
Where that 1st logistical dilemma that is making itself felt is the Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD), jammer & FPV based AFU air superiority over Kursk below 3,000 feet/914 meters.
We saw this at #Krynky in 2023 and we are seeing it again now in Kursk. 9/
It's the reach of the Ukrainian Baba Yaga with a more than 25 km radius of action while dropping heavy munitions, or FPV's while acting as a radio relay, that is going to be a horror show for the RuAF.
Three TM-62 mines dropped from one will cut a railway line.
And Russia can't risk scarce railway repair crews inside the Baba Yaga bubble for fear those crews will be targeted.
10/
In WW2 the 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force would sweep areas before British Commonwealth armored columns penetrating Nazi lines.
Typhoons were armed with 8 each RP-3 rockets and P-47's with 500lb bombs.
AFU is replaying these tactics using drones. 11/
Wherever Ukrainian ground forces are present, you have to draw a 25 km bubble ahead of them to account for their drone interdiction of major transport infrastructure and 10 km for killing Russian motor transport.
Russia's real logistical dilemma is they are on exterior versus interior lines of communications with an inferior sized ground force.
The Russians were too confident in the paralytic fear of the Biden NSC. The fools.
The NSC is now paralyzed between fear of Moscow & fear of political crucifixion on multiple fronts.
13/ (H/T @WarintheFuture)
The analytical loons on X buying into the "Russia Strong™️" narrative about RuAF having infantry superiority ignored the fact that RuAF counted on the Biden Administration keeping Ukraine out of Russia.
Reflexive Control infowar doctrine was used as a RuAF strategic economy of force measure to get local numerical superiority for offensives.
So RuAF didn't honor the threat of AFU's larger ground forces across from the Kursk Oblast.
14/
This only worked as long as Ukraine played by US rules. It looks like the Biden Admin refusal to allow ATACMS strikes on Russian airfields while VKS withdrew was the last straw.
The lack of Russian reserves means Kherson Oblast is the only source of formed military units, unless RuAF gives up the Vovchansk offensive.
GMLRS made this a problem in the summer of 2022. (Map⬇️)
ATACMS ranges on all rail lines in occupied Ukraine. It will take more than a week to get RuAF units from Kherson to Kursk by rail.
15/ (H/T @FreudGreyskull)
Russia has to gather a lot of scarce motor transport to move ground units out of Kherson.
Then put them, and especially their heavy equipment, on rail outside of GMLRS range and take the risk of ATACMS and partisan attacks in Southern Ukraine to get them to Kursk.
16/
The complete destruction of the Russian railway ferry fleet was, in retrospect, a strategic level AFU shaping operation for the current Kursk offensive
It is certain that Ukraine is waiting for a munitions train to approach the Kerch Straits bridge.
Being a WW2 Pacific historian specializing in electronic warfare, signals & logistics.
It makes you acutely aware that troops in transit are utterly useless for doing anything until they arrive, shake out and move from the port to battle.
Russia is doing that with trains. 18/
It isn't just moving the 100K troops RuAF needs to stabilized, & then start reducing the Kursk salient.
The ATACMS threat dispursed VKS jets needs munitions & fuel moved to support operations simultaneously, w/o forklifts & pallets.
Bombs on a train aren't on a flight line.
19/
The Russian Railway monopoly is suffering a perfect storm of Western railway cassette bearing wear out, maintenance work force burnout, and administrative chaos between oligarchs owning rolling stock.
I think the real objective of the AFU strategic raid into Kursk Oblast is to cause a systemic collapse of Russian railway system as a set up for a series of AFU offensives.
That video of Ukrainian PSU glide bomb strikes underlines Russia still has nothing like the partial dry bridge gap crossing capability of a medium girder bridge in the 3rd year of the war in Ukraine.
Please recall DR. Celeste Wallander [ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS] extended rant about what the Biden Administration considered civilian versus military targets inside Russia for Ukrainian assault drones.
Wallander saying Russian oil refineries are civilian targets most likely means the Biden Administration views Russian power infrastructure even more of a civilian target.
The lack of AFU grid strikes on Russia & this new power grid killing drone warhead make me go...hummm.🤔
3/3
This act of cost-ineffective public theater by Putin is his going away present to the Western escalation managers they so desperately need to justify their failed retread of appeasement policy jobs
The cost of an IRBM/ICBM is around 10-20 times the cost of an ALCM/GLCM/SLCM 1/
After that event, every non-reusable orbital class rocket launcher in the world designed and built before her will be obsolete the same way every battleship built and designed before the all big gun HMS Dreadnought was made so.
2/3
Nothing except another fully reusable rocket can compete with Starship in exactly the same way that no other battleship could compete with HMS Dreadnought, unless it was a all big gun main battery dreadnought battleship.
The spokesman of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Andriy Yusov has stated that Russia's military-industrial complex can produce 40-50 Kh-101 cruise missiles every month.
The question that @GrandpaRoy2 photo raises is exactly how much of that X-101 production rate is being assembled using recycled Kh-55/55SM missile components?
"More than zero" was confirmed from that photo...but exactly how many?
Russia seems headed towards a February 1917 moment.
1. A kilogram of potatoes in Nov 2024 is 73% more expensive than in Jan 2024. 2. Interest rates reached 21% in Oct 2024 3. Mortgage rates have risen to 28%