The two key railway marshalling yards for the Russian Army in occupied Ukraine are in Belgorod and Rostov on Don.
And Belgorod railway marshalling yard just got cut off from the north.
Rerouting train traffic like this hasn't happened in Russia since 1941.
2/
This Reddit map of AFU advances indicates the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), upper right, may soon be isolated from the Russian power grid to points south.
Given the Rostov on Don NPP lost one of two reactors to a maintenance casualty.
Given the number of confirmed AFU brigades involved in the Kursk operation, and the complete lack of a Russian strategic ground forces reserve anywhere.
It is looking far more like @secretsqrl123 idea strategic envelopment of Belgorod than mine of a strategic raid.
7/
The much reported AFU woes in the Donbas were the result of mostly 2nd line units being put into the front lines behind a "Ghost Army" strategic deception while the elite units were being quietly prepared for the Kursk/Belgorod axis envelopment.
Meanwhile, AFU ground forces are making amphibious raid demonstrations at the Kinburn Spit to try and freeze RuAF ground units in Kherson from redeployment.
The following is evaluation is based on a number of professional discussions:
This CRPA found in a shot down jet Shaheed is reported to be Russian built. This is highly doubtful as the design and construction style looks far too professional for Russian industry.
Bluntly - Russians tend towards cheapskate up-front capital manufacturing solutions.
The upshot is injection molded and die cast components are not a common feature in Russian designs as tooling for manufacturing designs is expensive up front,
2/
...even if the mass production unit costs are lower.
In addition, Western style SMA RF connectors are not a feature of the Soviet technology base.
" Please summarize the pre-World War 1 to 1942 career of merchant armed raiders and compare that data to Ukraine's recent drone attack in the Mediterranean with a drone armed commercial vessel."
2/
This is @grok's final summary:
"In essence, Ukraine's approach modernizes the raider concept—swapping guns for drones and merchant disguises for stealthy launches— but lacks the historical volume due to the conflict's constraints.
3/
In Donetsk, reconnaissance operators face constant drone surveillance, electromagnetic degradation, and hyper-local combat conditions that invalidate long-held assumptions about stealth and standoff intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).
2/3
This article contends that NATO must, with urgency, reform its reconnaissance doctrine, training, and force structure to survive and efficiently operate in a drone-saturated battlefield."
Every competent USN surface officer knows in their gut an anti-aircraft cruiser should not be operating with downed identification friend or foe (IFF) and Link-16 data link with no E-2 Hawkeye AEW support.
That sound drama isn't World War One or any "medium intensity" conflict since 1918.
It is the sound of how 21st century Peer-to-Peer conflict is fought.
A conflict Western ground militaries are obsolescent in equipment to face.
2/3
That Russo-Ukraine War video is a soundscape US Army National Training Centers are too obsolete/incapable of replicating, because US Army flag ranks are allergic to training with high densities of small/cheap/many FPV drones.
SHORAN was a WW2 blind bombing system using two radio stations and an electromechanical computer.
In 1938 an RCA engineer named Stuart William Seeley, while attempting to remove "ghost" signals from an experimental television system, discovered he could measure distances 2/
...by time differences in radio reception.
Instead of building a radar unit with this discovery, he proposed using this technique for precision ground-based radio beacon navigation bombing aid.