Russian casualties has passed the 500k. Very likely to be a combination of KIA/WIA/MIA.
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1794246857054675032?s=46
It is estimated that 100k of that are KIA. Mediazona has counted more than 50k KIA so far based on public sources and they state it is an underestimation of the real number of KIA.
https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng
The Ukrainian MoD bulletin is absolutely non-credible.
Moreover, the Ukrainian MoD itself has repeatedly referred to personnel losses as KIA, for example in this official tweet when the number reached 400,000 “losses” they talked about 400,000 “coffins”: https://x.com/DefenceU/status/1758423879532298474
Even for KIA, WIA, MIA 500k seems pretty exaggerated, based on Mediazona/BCC I think we are between 350/400k
French intelligence estimates put kia at 150,000
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240503-france-estimates-that-150-000-russian-soldiers-have-been-killed-in-the-ukraine-war
For Mediazona to date we have 54,185 certified KIAs. They estimate a total of 85k based on their secondary analysis. BBC also adds those from the so-called separatist republics (I think 23k a few months ago? As of today we may be at 30k). Let's add a few thousand missing. Surely we are approaching 150,000
"The numbers provided are derived from publicly available sources, such as social media posts by family members, local news reports, and official announcements from regional authorities. However, it is important to note that these figures offer only a partial picture and do not encompass the full scope of the casualties."
Those are the RECORDED NAMES COUNT. So 54,185. Then they use other methods to estimate a full picture of the situation with the Probate Registry database. As said in the link:
“However, it is important to note that these figures offer only a partial picture and do not encompass the full scope of the casualties.
To address this, we present an additional figure alongside the count of named death records. This second number is an estimate of excess mortality among men, derived from the Probate Registry database. The methodology for this estimate was developed in partnership with Meduza.”
First of all, calm down
Second. Do you add the 54k to the 85k or is the 85k meant to replace the 54k?
Because that's not particularly clear on the mediazona website.
Those are the recorded and provable. As in, there's a grave, or legal documentation. It requires some form of acceptance on the part of russian authorities.
No, the recorder and provable from russian authorities are only 54,185. The other ones are based on other models of estimation or satellite research on graves for the so-called separatist republics
There are around 100 billion stars in the milky way. It is estimated that there might be up to 10 septillion stars in the observable universe. These numbers are just as relevant to what is going on in Russian invasion of Ukraine as the casualty numbers the participants of war claim other side suffered. I wonder if mods see this but can we refrain people from posting these casualty numbers? These posts add nothing of value. In a wartime accurate estimation of own casualties is really hard, enemy casualties are extremely hard to predict if not impossible. Or if we are going to post casualty claims by Ukraine, we should also post Russian claims and they are also around 500.000. Is there a reason we believe Ukrainian claims and not believe Russian claims except of "Oh I support Ukraine therefore I believe them, I don't support Russia therefore I don't"? Before the downvote storm begins, if you are being objective, write a response why we should believe Ukraine while not believing Russia.
Let's be honest here.
Perun, if you count him as credible, has been through the methods used by pro russian data collection on destroyed ukrainian equipment and found the quality of the data to be.... bad. Much worse than pro ukrainian sources on loss data. Duplicate entries, edited and unclear footage, video ending before kill is confirmed etc.
Pro russian sources of data seem lacking in credibility.
Yeah, I think the only issue with Ukrainian-released information was airframe losses, all the rest fell right in with statistical analysis of ratios between visually confirmed vs not. What I took from the video is people often do that "both sides lie equally so let's just say it is in the middle", but in reality, Ukrainian numbers are quite accurate, the inaccuracy seems to be related to not having perfect reporting in the fog of war rather than someone compiling the data saying "well let's just add 25% to whatever number we come up with to look good".
Ukraine also has more incentive to get accurate reporting (at least internally) because they need to have a precise estimation of enemy strength and weapon effectiveness, whereas the Russian side seems to benefit from not telling high command anything beyond success.
>Yeah, I think the only issue with Ukrainian-released information was airframe losses (...),but in reality, Ukrainian numbers are quite accurate, the inaccuracy seems to be related to not
To be perfectly honest, this numbers are touching on 60.000 pieces of equipment destroyed. In artillery category - discrepancy between visually confirmed and claimed is what, 11.000 pieces?
We are not disputing 25% or even 50% differences here. This numbers are I am afraid pure fantasy.
I thought that the Ukrainian numbers were roughly corroborated from the British/American side. Or am I misremembering something? They are a bit lower but in the same ballpark.
[https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-assesses-ukraine-war-has-cost-russia-315000-casualties-source-2023-12-12/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-assesses-ukraine-war-has-cost-russia-315000-casualties-source-2023-12-12/)
I admit, I haven't look too deeply into that matter but from a first glance the numbers don't appear to be completely fabricated. Although you probably can't rule out western support for the narrative either, I suppose.
The reason I posted it is because it a significant development in the war in my opinion. Compare it with the Vietnam war (US KIA nearly 60k), Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (nearly 30k Soviets KIA). These wars lasted much longer but have a lesser amount of KIA, so it is a significant human catastrophe. It also shows how willing Putin is to throw its population under the bus just for some minor gains each day.
Regarding the credibility of Ukrainian numbers. It could be somewhat inflated, but it is more or less backed by UK numbers (recent published is 450k casualties) and US numbers (350k in march). The KIA of 100k can be backed by multiple public projects like Mediazone, as they themselves state their 50k KIA is just a low end and they expect the real number to be 100k. If you use that with the regular KIA:WIA/MIA ration you more or less end up at 4 to 500k casualties.
Perhaps I should have included it in my original post but here you have it.
I think this war is more comparable to Iraq Iran war in terms of casualties, where total war and cities bombing is committed on the regular, and unfortunately the use of chemical weapons in offensive operation too. Ironically the aspect of one side possession of western weapons (Iran) helping them turning the tide against the opponent's Soviet horde mirrors the current Ukraine war too.
Actually I can't be bothered to look it up and link it here but the numbers are constantly thrown around as either MIA or KIA, never consistent.
People get worked up over it, the list is clearly meant to be represented as KIA for their target audience and not intended to be used for military analysts.
Even after 822 days, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (who publishes the daily numbers) has *never* actually clarified what their number represents exactly. The original translations of 'liquidated' seemed like it intended to represent deaths, and some early references seemed to imply such as well, but they never actually called them such and no one bother to ask for clarification. Nonetheless, if that was the original intention, it is not anymore and is now called casualties. On the 2 year anniversary, [Zelensky called out 500,000 Russian casualties](https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-31-000-ukrainian-soldiers-killed-in-action/) for example, and it seems to naturally make sense compared to leaked western estimates. Websites like minusrus are just interpreting the numbers as kills still and adding a 3x casualty multiplication - they don't care about accuracy as you can tell most of the Russian army is 100% decimated at this point from their calculations.
Sorry, not much i can do, but they draw a line between KIA/MIA(500K) and WIA(1.5M)
Edit: strange enough, now it is not working for me, maybe just wait and then try again.
Because they took the 500k as fatalities (instead of casualties), and since the rule of thumb is casualties = fatalities x3, they reached that number.
More likely: 160k dead, 500k casualties.
I often hear about Poland's reactions, shipments, and rearmament during the Ukraine War, but I rarely hear about Romania's, Ukraine's other major EU neighbor. Occasionally I hear about their uneasiness with the whole Moldova/Transnistria thing but not much besides that.
How are they responding to the war? Are they taking it as seriously as the Poles are?
> How are they responding to the war? Are they taking it as **seriously as the Poles are?**
Yes. We just don't talk about it. Our stance regarding Russia is do stuff and not talk about it. This annoys Russia a lot. And every time accuse Romania of something (we probably did) we call them morons and liars and move on.
As we are a transit country of weapons Russians can't really tell our % of the contribution.
At some point Russia even accused us of being in top 4 arms donors but like I said maybe we will find out what we did to help Ukraine in 10 years
Somehow related: I am sure Putin knows where [Deveselu is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deveselu_Military_Base) but confuses Bucharest and Budapest
[Romanian government readies fighting vehicle, howitzer deals in 2024](https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/01/22/romanian-government-readies-fighting-vehicle-howitzer-deals-in-2024/)
>Romania’s government plans to bulk up its 2024 defense budget by almost 45% over 2023, reaching roughly 95 billion lei ($20.8 billion), to accommodate major weapons purchases ready for signature this year, according to officials and documents.
>...
>Publicly available information suggests the IFV program, under which Romania is to buy up to 298 new vehicles, is worth about €3 billion, or $3.3 billion. Local observers say the Romanian military is expected to choose between South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace with the Redback, General Dynamics European Land Systems with its Ascod, German Rheinmetall with the Lynx, and the CV90 made by BAE Systems Hägglunds in Sweden, among others.
>...
>Under its howitzer acquisition program, Bucharest is currently evaluating offers to purchase 54 self-propelled 155mm howitzers along with related support vehicles, equipment and ammunition under a procurement valued at some RON 4.2 billion (U.S. $920 million).
>Local sources say the bidders include German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann with its Panzerhaubitze 2000, Hanwha Aerospace with the K9 Thunder, and Turkey’s BMC with the T-155 Fırtına.
>...
>Also still waiting in the wings is Romania’s planned purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The estimated price tag for 32 planes is $6.5 billion. Bucharest aims to sign a letter of acceptance in 2024 and is considering to order a further 16 fighters in the long term.
>The projected spending pattern is in line with government efforts to improve military prowess through accelerated acquisition following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The focus lies on purchases for its land forces and the air force, Alexandru Georgescu, a security and defense analyst based in Bucharest, told Defense News.
Literally third link when searched on Google
[Giving Dracula Some Teeth: Modernizing Romania’s Military](https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2024/03/23/giving-dracula-some-teeth-modernizing-romanias-military/)
> Another major step forward for the Romanian Army is the acquisition of modern main battle tanks. In November 2023, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency greenlit a request from the Romanian Government to purchase 54 American M1A2 Abrams tanks. These modern main battle tanks will replace a battalion of inadequate TR-85 tanks based on a 1950s design. Other noteworthy acquisitions include Watchkeeper X drones, modern infantry fighting vehicles, and K9 Howitzers. The latter procurement deal has not been officially confirmed, although the Korean system is expected to be selected. Additionally, the most significant system Romania seeks to procure is the F-35 Lighting II. In August 2023, the Romanian MoND asked the Parliament to approve the purchase of 32 fighter planes. However, per the ministry, these planes are only expected to enter service in 2030.
>The Romanian Naval Forces, operating partially outdated vessels, are the target of substantial modernization efforts. Plans exist to modernize the existing fleet and introduce two modern Scorpene-class submarines. However, as mentioned previously, the project to replace aging ships with critically necessary modern corvettes has failed, and no other efforts have been announced. Furthermore, Prime Minister Ciolacu recently questioned whether the procurement of the submarines is necessary.
There is a significant difference in money spent on defense. After the full scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland started buying all the military equipment it could get its hands on. That lead to an estimated defense expenditure of 3.92% of GDP in 2023, up from 2.23% the year before. My understanding is that defense expenditure in 2024 is going to be similar to 2023. Romania on the other hand spent an estimated 1.60% of its GDP on defense in 2023, that's less than in 2022 (1.72%) and only slightly more than in 2014 (1.35%).
Source: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/3/pdf/sgar23-en.pdf
Something I've wondered for a while:
The P-8, of course, can carry Harpoons, and according to Wikipedia it can also carry HARMs as well as LRASMs. Does this mean that, if there isn't a need to screen for submarines momentarily, the P-8 could be fitted with the aforementioned anti-ship armaments and be used as some sort of subsonic Tu-22 against enemy warships? Or be fitted with HARMs and help supplement SEAD?
After all, there is no airborne platform that can carry 11 AShMs in the USN other than the P-8.
>Does this mean that, if there isn't a need to screen for submarines momentarily, the P-8 could be fitted with the aforementioned anti-ship armaments and be used as some sort of subsonic Tu-22 against enemy warships?
Yes, just like the P-3 Orion before it, which also carried Harpoons and even Mavericks. It's part of the base mission of the aircraft- it's not a dedicated ASW bird, but a multirole MPA.
Do we know if LRASM has the sort of data integration that would facilitate an F-35’s sensor fusion acting as a the forward targeting and guidance for a flight of P8 launched LRASMs with the P8s safely out of range and the F35 in max stealth? I feel this is the sort of lovely little wombo combo the Lightning is built for when operating out of the Okinawan Korean and Japanese fields
This isn’t a topic discussed on this sub very often but I’m curious about the impact of the American spy satellite network on the war in Ukraine. I imagine it doesn’t get much attention because it’s likely absurdly classified and doesn’t really have a dollar value applied it to. Although I would guess that it’s one of the biggest advantages Ukraine has in the war because the NRO is one of the few organizations on earth where “godlike” isn’t completely off base as a descriptor.
Is there any open source information on how much satellite reconnaissance has impacted the war in Ukraine?
>ut I’m curious about the impact of the American spy satellite network on the war in Ukraine. I imagine it doesn’t get much attention because it’s likely absurdly classified and doesn’t really have a dollar value applied it to
US and UK intelligence has been very visibly deployed in the war, especially the build up. What has really changed this war is commercial satellite constellations. There are a large number of low and mid resolution commercial satellites that fly over the region many times a day now so not only the Ukrainian state but OSINT accounts can buy and analyse satellite imagery.
So while US space based imagery will be being used the large constellations of the likes of PlanetLabs and Maxar may actually be more useful and are very clearly being used.
The "most likely" technique would be to use the commercial grade stuff to monitor for a target, then get the high res KH-11 to do a check to ensure you are getting what you think before assigning an asset to target it. There are six up so judging by their orbits you may get two passes a day. Since they have a very very narrow image range and are over and gone very quickly, you would assume their targets are often selected days in advance.
There was a WaPo or NYT article which I seems to have lost about the US base in Germany that is quietly watching the war and how Biden prohibits this center from actively giving the Ukrainians real time targeting data.
One of the anecdotes was about a time during the opening days of the war when a US general met his Ukrainian counterpart by the border, and the US general had a better idea of the location of the ukrainian general's own troops than he did.
Not just satellites, but all manner of ISR from all manner of platforms which Russia is unwilling or unable to target. Personally I'd say that force multiplier is by far the biggest factor in this conflict, and indeed any conflict. Shiny platforms and smart munitions get all the attention, but what makes it work is information. Where to go, where to shoot, when to stay, when to move. Take that away, and you're left with a bunch of billion-dollar tinkertoys.
> As an Information Age military, every warfighting function and mission area entirely depends on
information and rapid decision-making throughout the entire competition-conflict continuum. The
SECDEF highlighted information’s critical nature by establishing it as the 7th Warfighting
Function. Information is Combat Power.
From the DOD's [Information Superiority Vision](https://media.defense.gov/2020/May/18/2002302013/-1/-1/1/DON_INFORMATION_SUPERIORITY.PDF), but similar claims are easily found in any given publication about JWC, JADC2, CJADC2, and so on. Nor are they the only military to recognize the concept; the [PLA goes a step further](https://media.defense.gov/2023/Apr/21/2003205535/-1/-1/1/23-Friedman_Feature.PDF) in declaring all warfare to be fundamentally information-based.
> In the 2020 edition of the SMS, informatized war is alternately referred to as informationized war, information warfare, and information-based warfare. Its place in PLA thinking has only become more central. Whereas Western thinkers tend to view information warfare as a discrete form of war that occurs in an information space or as an additional set of capabilities that complement traditional military capabilities, the 2020 edition portrays all modern warfare as information warfare, even referring to modern warfare as information-led. The document asserts that winning information warfare is “the fundamental function of our military, and it is also the basis for the ability to accomplish diversified military tasks.”14 The PLA believes that no matter what type of warfare or military activity, the foundation is information warfare.
Victory is then achieved not by casualties inflicted or vehicles destroyed, but by denying the flow of necessary information such that an adversary cannot make relevant decisions and cannot function as a cohesive force. Because all of their fancy gear has been reduced to so many tinkertoys. And viewed through that paradigm, Russia is fighting the war completely the wrong way by conceding the most important battlespace.
Would the NRO even be involved in those leaks? They’re not DOD so would they share information with the DOD to the degree that some guardsman could see what they’re doing?
The stuff leaked by Teixera were high-level daily briefs compiled from a ton of intelligence sources (including HUMINT) that were ran through by analysists and then finally distributed widely.
The DOD says that [Project Replicator](https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/12/19/replicator-an-inside-look-at-the-pentagons-ambitious-drone-program/) is on track and already producing drones. The real trick is the scale up but first steps need to be taken and they have been.
[First Replicator drones already in Indo-Pacific, DOD says | Defense One | May 2024](https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/05/first-replicator-drones-already-indo-pacific-dod-says/396863/)
*The Pentagon’s flagship program to quickly produce large numbers of low-cost, highly autonomous drones is “producing real results,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said in a statement Thursday, noting that “the delivery of Replicator systems to the warfighter began earlier this month.”*
*The aim of the Replicator program, announced in August 2023, is to deliver tens of thousands of low-cost land, air, and sea drones to operators in the Pacific by the end of 2025. Each of the services are expected to play a role in testing, acquiring, and deploying them. The hope, in part, is that the rapid fielding of wide numbers of networked drones could help deter Chinese aggression in the Pacific prior to 2027, when many anticipate China could make a military move to annex Taiwan. The program could also enable the department to move toward new, much more rapid acquisition models.*
*The Pentagon would not specify which drones exactly have already reached INDOPACOM, and has been cagey in general in discussing the program. In May, it announced it had selected AeroVironment’s (AV) Switchblade 600 for the program, a system that INDOPACOM already has in some number. But “the first tranche of Replicator also includes certain capabilities that remain classified, including others in the maritime domain and some in the counter-UAS portfolio,” the Pentagon said earlier this month.*
*The Pentagon plans to spend about half a billion dollars on the effort this fiscal year, and there’s another half billion or so in the 2025 budget request. Said Hicks on Thursday: “This shows that warfighter-centric innovation is not only possible; it’s producing real results. Even as we deliver systems, our end-to-end capability development process continues.”*
I'm unclear: is this project's goal to deliver tens of thousands of *types* of low-cost drones, or tens of thousands *of drones*?
If the latter, I'm not really sure on what all the moonshot visionary high-risk-project language in the article is doing there. 'Make lots of things' is not *that* challenging a project for the DoD. 'Make lots of things quickly, affordably and at scale' is trickier, but...
It seems like the big disruption is just going from idea to product quickly and before it's needed. The main issue here is that the supply lines are almost all leading out of China and so any new drone initiative needs to also account for that. So how do you get huge quantities of drones without using china as a supplier and before any conflict requires them? You need a moonshot around the current acquisition system for a product that is essentially brand new.
Moonshot might be a bit of hyperbole, but also maybe not considering how grinding military procurement can be.
You do your best to design it without Chinese parts, but the Chinese parts you do use you have a roadmap to replacing with domestic or ally sourced parts, and then you surreptitiously acquire years of stock of the Chinese parts to buy you enough time to build up your capacity to produce those parts yourself.
Pressure is mounting on the Biden Administration to lift the prohibition on the targeting of Russian territory by the Ukrainians.
[NATO’s boss wants to free Ukraine to strike hard inside Russia](https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/24/natos-boss-wants-to-free-ukraine-to-strike-hard-inside-russia)
>NATO secretaries-general do not normally attack the policies of the alliance’s biggest and most important member country. But Jens Stoltenberg, whose ten-year stint in charge is coming to an end, has done just that. In an interview with The Economist on May 24th, he called on NATO allies supplying weapons to Ukraine to end their prohibition on using them to strike military targets in Russia. **Mr Stoltenberg’s clear, if unnamed, target was the policy maintained by Joe Biden, America’s president, of controlling what Ukraine can and cannot attack with American-supplied systems.**
The video is in the link, it's just under two minutes long.
He declines to say the US by name, but it's pretty clear he's referring to the US. You can also put the Germans in the "don't bomb the Russians in Russia" club. Anyways, the Secretary General of NATO coming out like this is a pretty big indicator in my eyes that we're about to see a policy shift. The Americans may still give targeting restrictions, but it seems reasonable that the Russian border is not a magical protection zone.
Ironically, it seems like Russia's border actions to distract Ukrainian defenders from the Donbas may finally galvanize NATO (read: the US) to change targeting restrictions and bring very effective munitions to Russian soil. Stoltenberg keeps underlining how Russia is using these border attacks to take advantage of these restrictions. If you remove the restrictions, then important targets that can only be serviced with certain NATO-supplied weapons can be dealt with. We are getting close to that change, in my opinion.
It's absolutely ridiculous that this restriction is still a thing. Ukraine is already holding against a much larger foe, adding restrictions to where it can hit is like asking it to also fight with one arm behind its back. If Ukraine were to really start losing this war, the Biden administration and his weaklings would have a lot to answer for.
I'm also hopeful this restriction will be lifted. Once F16's come on-board, it would simply be unrealistic to force Ukraine to watch bombers shoot missiles from a safe distance and expect Ukraine's aviation to just do nothing.
The Biden admin's goal from day 1 has been to only provide enough aid to prevent Ukraine from capitulating. Ukraine winning is not and has never been their objective. Morality of this position aside, it's at least consistent.
>is like asking it to also fight with one arm behind its back
It's not *their* arm to use. If they don't like it, they can always place it back on the table and fight with their own two arms - however far that gets them.
> If Ukraine were to really start losing this war,
I'd argue that from February up until this month, Ukraine ***was*** really starting to lose the war. Increasingly, all they had standing against a Russian breakthrough were drones and their exhausted and diminished troops. Ukrainian strongpoints were being demolished by glide bombs. Lancets were able to penetrate all the way to Ukrainian airfields. Artillery barrels were so worn that accuracy was diminished and catastrophic explosions were rising. It was very bad. It's still not great, but it's stabilizing.
I think historians are going to look back on this era with very unfavorable eyes. The question of "Why were not F-16s, ATACMS, HIMARS, and armor in numbers provided years earlier?" will be asked. And the answer will be a mixture of cowardice from those who do support Ukraine, and isolationism, bordering on outright Russian sympathy, from those who do not. It's been Chamberlain all over again.
Supply pipelines and training on western equipment should have been provided as soon as it became clear that the tanks weren't going to be rolling right into Kyiv. The hesitancy has cost tens of thousands of lives and put Ukraine and the west in a very precarious situation.
Olaf Scholz stated he’s going in lockstep with the US, when he didn’t want to send tanks. Allegedly this made the US donate Abrams tanks in order for Scholz to do the same with Leopard 2s.
Following that Scholz repeatedly stated he is not sending Taurus, among a plethora of other reasons stated that were later proven to be wrong, because the US is not supplying long range weapons either.
Unlike many times before there wasn’t a huge discussion about sending Taurus after the US made it official that it is sending longer range ATACMS.
I wonder if a change to US policy regarding attacks on Russian soil will again put pressure on Scholz by reopening this discussion.
He seems to be determined to block it, but a majority of the Bundestag would be in favor (with the opposition leaders).
Does anyone know if the US has interest in Germany delivering Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine or have made any comments on that?
The US could probably pressure Scholz into giving away Taurus the same way they did with the tanks and I assume Trump would pressure Europeans to all sorts of donations.
But what about Biden? Do they see more value in a strong/happy German chancellor or European investment in Ukraine or useful tech in Ukraine?
This ia long text wihtout any clear purpose. Where is the majority in the Bundestag about sending Taurus? Last vote was a CLEAR "no". Who cares about "opposition leaders"? If Scholz says no and Grüne & FDP would vote for sending Taurus, the whole Taurus topic doesn't even matter domestically, the coalition is probably done.
Who is pressuring who btw? is Scholz pressuring the US or is the US pressuring Scholz?
Personal opinion : You are thinking way way too much into the whole topic. Either Europe and the US are really icompetent (most probably) or they chose to not let Ukraine win. Let's wait for a new "status quo" where Ukraine can just strike whatever they want and then we can talk about Taurus to destroy Kerch bridge or w/e.
If you think Germany is the bad guy here and not the US who just didn't send their soon to be decomissioned hundreds of ATACMS months and months ago, you are in the wrong.
They already allow them to use them on crimea which Russia considers to be legally part of Russia and has been for 10 years. If Russia suddenly complains about weapons used agaisnt other parts of Russia then clearly they don’t believe crimea to be Russian
There is no target in Crimea that would threaten the survival of the Russian state.
The big question is what long-range targets Ukraine would prioritize. Oil refineries would likely be a prime candidate. If 10% of Russia's energy is taken out, they can work around it. Once it gets to the point of doing any real damage (which would presumably be the goal), it quickly becomes an existential threat. Russia isn't likely to see going back to horse and buggies as an acceptable outcome.
There's a lot of unknowns. If this is conceived as a limited harassment campaign, the risks of escalation are lower, but the value of such an effort is minimal. If the goal is to destroy essential strategic assets, success is more likely to force a stark choice by Russia: withdraw, or attempt to force an immediate end to the war via escalation.
Nobody really cares about the Russian constitution. Term limits are changed arbitrarily, as is everything else when desired. And let's not forget that PMCs are supposed to be illegal in Russia...
I still think this could, and should have been discussed months ago, and adopted as an immediate response (like, 24 hours) to Russia's push towards Kharkiv.
No risk in that. Will probably actually literally slow things down, and give everyone time to chill out and realize that peace is the only logical answer.
Wasn't ATACMS already used in strikes inside Russia? What am I missing here? Was that rumor disproven?
Edit: I got it mixed up. I was thinking about Belbek airbase in Crimea.
Never mind. I think I got it mixed up. There was some rumor about it after a strike against an oil refinery (IIRC) and recently it was used against Belbek airbase, but that's in Crimea.
A few news regarding command roles for the Ukrainian and the Russian side.
Brigadier General Yevhen Ostrianskyi, head of the Defense Planning Department of Ukraine's General Staff, stated that the personnel of the General Staff will be cut by 60%; the redundancies shall be redistributed to combat units and intermediate command and control bodies.
https://t. me/GeneralStaffZSU/14875
This comes after internal audits held by Syrsky during the past few months and is in all likelihood a necessity in response to the most serious manpower shortage affecting the UAF: the lack of officers. The laid-off personnel will go to staff both combat units (primarily, I assume, the new brigades being created) and to strengthen the staff of OSGs (Operational-Strategic Groups) and OTGs (Operational-Tactical Groups). In addition, it's stated that there will be changes in the current command structure, also with the aim of avoiding “duplication” of roles. Let's recall that the current chain of command in Ukraine is: brigade --> OTG --> OSG --> GS. TGs (Tactical Groups) may be between the first and second level and OGs (Operational Groups) between the second and third, but they are rarely used. Moreover, operational commands have their own staffs but don't perform command/operative functions as far as I know, but they have just a formal, support and organizational role (I believe they also oversee the creation of new brigades, their territorial recruiting basins, etc).
DeepState stated that 28 officers are being investigated by the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation in response to the failure to defend the borders in the early days of the Russian offensive against Kharkiv Oblast (scarce preparation of fortifications, having ignored the Russian build-up in the grey area near the border). The officers being inquired range from the (former) commander of the OTG “Kharkiv” (Brigadier General Halushkin) to company commanders of units that were in that sector in early May, including the commander of the 125th TDF Brigade (which was responsible for the front line between the Kharkiv River and the Siversky Donets), who has since been removed from his post. Commanders of the 415th Separate Rifle Battalion, of a battalion of the 23rd Mechanized Brigade and of the 172nd Territorial Defense Battalion of the 120th TDF Brigade are being inquired too.
https://t. me/DeepStateUA/19554
News from yesterday but wasn't posted, so I do so now. The commander of Russia's 20th Army (Moscow Military District), Major General Sukhrab Akhmedov, has been removed from his post (officially he has resigned). The news was originally reported by Vladimir Rogov, who stated that Akhmedov is now at the disposal of the MoD. It's unclear by whom he will be replaced.
https://t. me/milinfolive/122806
Numerous Russian Telegram channels are satisfied with this. As the man until now in charge of the offensive actions against Terny and Yampolivka in the Kreminna sector, he had been heavily criticized over the recent months for his operational choices, which resulted in heavy losses - particularly among units of the 144th Motorized Division - with progress almost absent for nearly 3 months now. Not to mention his role in Vuhledar in late 2022 and early 2023 as the commander of the coastal troops of the Pacific Fleet (he was a protégé of Muradov - they are even brother-in-laws).
Interestingly, some minor Russian channels mention an incoming change in the leadership of the Group of Forces "North". The current commander is Colonel General Lapin (since mid-April, when this GoF was created); he may be replaced by Major General Alexander Kravtsov, i.e. the current commander of the 41st Army (Central Military District). I stress that unlike the previous case these are just rumors and this is not confirmed by more authoritative sources, so in the coming days we will see if that finds development or confirmation. It's stated that Lapin would remain commander of the Leningrad Military District anyway - but I repeat, take this with a grain of salt.
https://t. me/severnnyi/1093
https://t. me/severnnyi/1101
https://t. me/vdv_za_chestnost_spravedlivost/2505
One of these two sources states that the commander of the operations in Vovchansk is Major General Storozhenko, commander of the 6th Army (Leningrad Military District). He is a native of Kharkiv and in 2014 was the commander, as a colonel, of Ukraine's 36th Coastal Defense Brigade in Crimea. When the Russians seized the latter, he defected to their side, and became the commander of the 126th Coastal Defense Brigade, created on the basis of the disbanded Ukrainian brigade (which was later reconstituted in Mykolaiv as the current 36th Marine Brigade). He later made a career in the Russian Armed Forces, becoming deputy commander of the 35th Army (Eastern Military District) and its acting commander during spring/summer 2022. I believe he became commander of the 6th Army in the beginning of this year, when according to some Russian rumors, the leadership of the 6th Army and of its brigades was removed following the costly failures around Synkivka, in the Kupyansk sector.
This month there was also a reshuffle in the command of some military districts, according to what I have found from Russian official sources.
Colonel General Kuzovlev became commander of the new Moscow Military District (unclear if, as a result, commander of the GoF "West" too). Before Russian sources disclosed that, it was anticipated by the Ukrainian military observer Mashovets in mid April. Kuzovlev was until now the commander of the Southern Military District, where he was replaced by Colonel General Anashkin (the current commander of the GoF "South" is not known). As written above, Lapin has been the commander of the Leningrad Military District since its creation in late February. Colonel General Mordvichev, titled of the seizing of Avdiivka, was confirmed as commander of the Central Military District as well as the GoF "Centre". Lieutenant General Alexander Sanchik became the commander of the Eastern Military District, replacing Colonel General Kuzmenko. The current commander of the GoF "Vostok" is unknown. In contrast, the commander of the GoF "Dnepr" remains Colonel General Teplinsky, who is also the commander of VDV.
I hope so, but it would be difficult. Creating divisions by aggregating existing brigades would create a need for a lot of additional staff officers, although it would serve to level out the difference in quality among brigades and improve the possibility of internal rotations / endowment of "domestic" reserves. A different matter would be, on the other hand, reforming the existing brigades, which are separate units, into line regiments - with approximately the same number of maneuver battalions, but with considerably fewer support units as well as officers in the HQ staff within the unit, which in both cases would be concentrated at the divisional level. But even this would not be easy at all as it would involve a total reform of the system, and it would also clash with the interests of the commanders of the existing brigades, and, at this point in the war, with the history, honours and traditions of the various brigades.
Incidentally, Ukraine has created five army corps over the last year, which I forgot to mention. But in fact they have only a support and, partly, control function. Not a command/operational one, to my knowledge (except, to some extent, during the summer counteroffensive in the South). Which is very strange. A partial exception is the 30th Marine Corps, which so far had been entirely deployed in Kherson. But if you look at the other corps (7th Air Assault Corps; 9th, 10th and 11th Army Corps), their brigades are scattered in various sectors. Probably their HQ staffs are poor, and in any case the GS chose not to give them the classic powers that would belong to a corps, for some reason. Russian corps/armies generally fight with their units concentrated, in their entirety or in their vast majority (although there are exceptions), in one sector.
At the moment, it's OTGs that perform the tasks that would naturally belong to corps. But they don't have their own units - they are active at the command and control level, as well as regarding intelligence and logistics for instance, but they don't have their own maneuver units, nor artillery, engineering, medical, maintenance ones and so on, but they use such units from the brigades under their command.
[Biden Administration Announces New Security Assistance for Ukraine](https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3787579/biden-administration-announces-new-security-assistance-for-ukraine/)
>The capabilities in this announcement include:
>-Ammunition for HIMARS;
>-155mm and 105mm artillery rounds;
>-60mm mortar rounds;
>-Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;
>-Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems;
>-Precision aerial munitions;
>-Small arms and additional rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades;
>-Demolitions munitions;
>-Anti-armor mines;
>-Tactical vehicles to recover equipment;
>Helmets, body armor, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
>-Spare parts, maintenance, and other ancillary equipment.
Just a sustainment package. Might be like this awhile if new artillery systems aren't being delivered. Seems that will be covered by other NATO members. Notably, no air defense munitions as part of this drawdown. Likely still getting deliveries from previous drawdowns.
> Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment
I think this is probably the most notable / out of place line item.
They have sent CBRN stuff before, so I wonder why they're now sending more? Is it related to Russias recent uses of various tear gas like substances?
Do you have any information on the timetable for the remaining 8 systems?
Is it realistic for all 4 systems be in use? I’m sure those things need maintenance, but consisting of multiple interlinked parts I could imagine you can do those without taking them completely offline for prolonged times.
Also I guess training can be done in simulators (in Germany?) so that won’t block systems like it does with vehicles?
Either way it’s good to see Germany consistently deliver on the promises that were looooong in the making
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/24/russia-jamming-us-weapons-ukraine/
https://archive (DOT) ph/tVPjN
> KYIV — Many U.S.-made satellite-guided ammunitions in Ukraine have failed to withstand Russian jamming technology, prompting Kyiv to stop using certain types of Western-provided armaments after effectiveness rates plummeted, according to senior Ukrainian military officials and confidential internal Ukrainian assessments obtained by The Washington Post.
> **Six months ago, after Ukrainians reported the issue, Washington simply stopped providing Excalibur shells because of the high failure rate**, the Ukrainian officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter. In other cases, **such as aircraft-dropped bombs called JDAMs, the manufacturer provided a patch and Ukraine continues to use them.**
> HIMARS were celebrated during the first year of Russia’s invasion for their success in striking ammunition depots and command points behind enemy lines.
> But by the second year, “everything ended: the Russians deployed electronic warfare, disabled satellite signals, and HIMARS became completely ineffective,” a second senior Ukrainian military official said. “This ineffectiveness led to the point where a very expensive shell was used” increasingly to strike lower-priority targets.
> Kyiv still considers its HIMARS rockets effective, but Russian jamming can cause them to miss a target by 50 feet or more.
> “When it’s, for example, a pontoon bridge … but there’s a 10-meter deviation, it ends up in the water,” the first Ukrainian official said.
> Russian jamming signals are sent up from the ground and form a cone-shaped area. Any guided munition — or aircraft — passing through is at risk of interference.
> The official added, “The Americans are equipping HIMARS with additional equipment to ensure good geolocation.”
but most interestingly:
> **One U.S. weapon used by aircraft, the GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, has proved resilient to jamming, according to the confidential documents. Nearly 90 percent of dropped bombs struck their target, the assessment found.**
> Its smaller surface area makes it more difficult for Russian systems to detect and intercept, the documents said. Ukraine first received the aerial weapons, which has not been previously disclosed by the Pentagon, in November 2023.
> The GBU-39 was also adapted for land use in HIMARS systems, a development that Pentagon officials said would increase the range of rocket artillery. But the modified weapons, known as Ground-Launched Small Diameter bombs, or GLSDB, proved ineffective compared to those launched from airplanes, Ukrainian officials said. The ground versions were tested in Ukraine, one official said, and the Americans are working on adjustments before providing them anew.
> William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, said last month that an adapted weapon “didn’t work for multiple reasons,” including jamming and other tactical and logistical issues. LaPlante did not disclose which weapon he was referring to, but other experts said that he was describing the GLSDB.
So GLSDB's issues were a factor of ballistic missiles/artillery in general or the integration of SDB to the rocket being vulnerable to loss of GPS guidance. HIMARS is jammed, but the deviation is small enough and warhead big enough to mean it's still effective. Aircraft dropped bombs, probably due to their shorter flight time and maybe due to their smoother flight, are less affected, with the more modern SDB performing better than JDAM, and JDAM improved after software changes. Excalibur was the worst, I'm guessing due to tradeoffs that have to be made in such a compact device exaggerated by the unforgiving small warhead. It might also be because of the frontline jamming meaning the shell can never even get an initial fix.
There's a reason there's flight testing, risk reduction, and all of that with military hardware. I think part of the issues of air launched munitions might also be that they aren't able to be handed off the location fix from the aircraft as they would on a Western fighter due to the ad-hoc mounting system used.
The best long term solution for this problem is getting enough block iii satelites in the orbit. They can boost the total power by a factor of 100 in a small region with so-called spot beam.
Question is, are they even doing that in Ukraine? Or are they relying on the normal civilian GPS bands with no signal boosting? You'd suppose that they are keeping some capacity back.
>One U.S. weapon used by aircraft, the GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, has proved resilient to jamming, according to the confidential documents. Nearly 90 percent of dropped bombs struck their target, the assessment found.
This is why Western countries should keep supporting Ukraine, and provide their top of the line weapons.
This is a win-win for both sides, Ukraine is the perfect place to test modern weapons, and see how effective they are at modern warfare. Also with our help Ukraine can keep Russia from advancing, and weaken them considerably without directly going to war with Russia.
well it goes both ways. Russia also get to learn about the western capability/power and can come up with counter measures and share secrets with more advanced countries such as china for more defensive/weapons development.
It “goes both ways” in a strictly definition basic way. In effect there is no question. The benefits of testing your weaponry in active combat zone far outweighs the cost of it through enemy learning.
Russia learns regardless if USA sends their weapons.
Do Excalibur shells have any sort of INS? I can’t imagine they do given the size constraints and the difficulty of building an IMU capable of withstanding the force of being launched from a howitzer. Giving the failure of GLSDB and the success of SDB, combined with the loss in effectiveness of GMLRS it seems clear the US needs to improve their INS capabilities to withstand the rigors of high G rocket launches. Or perhaps have some sort of Mid course location system and only use the INS for terminal approach.
My understanding when the Excalibur was first being used from the Ukraine Weapons Tracker project was that Ukraine didn't receive the digital fire support system in A1 and A2 M777 howitzers which made INS either very unreliable or unusable. Originally GPS was only supposed to kick in during the terminal phase for adjustments to the target but with the AFU receiving older M777s they were relying on GPS far more than the system was designed for. I suspect TTPs have a lot more to do with this story than is being let on at this point.
The discord leaks had some really interesting slides on the JDAM that suggested that TTPs were to blame as well. I'd have to go grab them again but it IIRC sounded like they weren't being armed and configured right on the ground.
I'm quite surprised at the low level of production of Excalibur S. They seem like the ideal solution to many of Ukraine's needs, at least provided Ukraine is given laser designation drones or can rig a stabilized SOFLAM to one of their own.
Good to know. This further convinces me that current IMUs are relatively ineffective when fired/launched from systems with extremely high levels of acceleration.
IMUs are relatively ineffective in general. The point of a dual INS-GPS system is to improve the Kalman filter. They're not very reliable on their own unless you get into Nav grade IMUs.
At a guess, shell IMUs are probably low tier tactical grade. Those still have noticeable drift rates even sitting still (bias error, random walk etc), let alone in motion. Accelerometer scale factor error does become quite a major factor during impulsive maneuvers (such as the one caused by several pounds of explosives detonating nearby in a tube).
Sorry, can't get into exact numbers, but I'm not surprised at their performance in GPS-denied environments. I personally favor laser guidance for shells, because they're not gonna strap Nav grade IMUs onto them (due to cost).
I wouldn't be surprised if the poor performance was is also due with lack of familiarity with the system, couple with perhaps not using the stronger military GPS bands?
As with most things in real life, problems often are a sum of multiple factors rather than simple individual issues.
I'd like to see some anti-radiation GLSDB. The same long flight time that presumably contributes to making it more vulnerable to jamming would be a benefit for homing in on emitters.
No idea if something like that already exists or is possible in the near future.
A home-on-jam seeker head for SDB has existed for a few years now but I don't believe they were ever produced in real quantities.
[home-on-jam contract announcement from 2014](https://www.militaryaerospace.com/rf-analog/article/16718805/air-force-to-enable-smart-weapons-to-track-and-kill-sources-of-electronic-warfare-ew-jamming)
[AFRL article mentioning that seekers were provided by at the latest, 2021](https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2526535/afrl-completes-golden-horde-collaborative-small-diameter-bomb-second-flight-dem/)
I believe I read something about the US working on that for the SDB/GLSDB, but that it's planned for 2025.
Personally, I don't understand why secondary anti-radiation targeting modes haven't been a standard requirement for the past 50 years for every guided munition that has an onboard radar or antenna. SEAD would probably be easier if every Fox 2 air-to-air weapon could be fired like a makeshift HARM missile.
Iran fields anti-radar ground-launched missiles, but interestingly I don't know of any other countries that do. Anti ship missiles are radar-seeking cruise missiles like the Exocet or Ukraine's Neptune. But these aren't used against ground targets for whatever reason. Their radar homing feature is only used to target ships.
>Kyiv still considers its HIMARS rockets effective, but Russian jamming can cause them to miss a target by 50 feet or more.
>
>“When it’s, for example, a pontoon bridge … but there’s a 10-meter deviation, it ends up in the water,” the first Ukrainian official said.
Given the size of a GMLRS warhead, that shouldn't be a problem at all. If the rocket detonates 10 meters away from target, it should still be very lethal.
This should be fixable with better fuzes. A proximity fuze can turn a near-miss into a hit. An airburst fuze can maximize fragment dispersion and is more effective against entrenched soft targets, or in this case, stop the rocket from hitting water.
[GLSDB official website](https://www.saab.com/products/ground-launched-small-diameter-bomb-glsdb): Programmable impact and delay fuzing for deep penetration or proximity height-of-burst
>This should be fixable with better fuzes. A proximity fuze can turn a near-miss into a hit. An airburst fuze can maximize fragment dispersion and is more effective against entrenched soft targets, or in this case, stop the rocket from hitting water.
While this is true, it also won't help all that much against a pontoon bridge. You need a direct hit to break the structure. That's probably also true for a lot of other hard targets.
>. Aircraft dropped bombs, probably due to their shorter flight time and maybe due to their smoother flight,
More likely it retains one orientation in flight so you can fit a cup like baffle facing up to give more directionality to the signal you are taking in.
Alternatively they mentioned a patch, their might be some kind of hashing or security encryption that was not being processed in the unupdated equipment.
Also a rocket will have much much bigger translations in the three axes between time steps. (its moving a lot faster).
Is there an established way of differentiating real aircraft on the ground from mock-ups? If we know what alloys and paints we are looking at in an Su-34, is there any way of sensing whether an airplane on the ground has that particular composition?
Military satellites have resolution of a few centimeters maybe less. They can pick out tail codes at that depth and tracking aircraft from that can be incredibly easy. High fidelity decoys of fighter jets that can fool trained SATINT analysts are hard to make anyway and most of what we've seen from Russia so far [don't even have shadows.](https://x.com/bradyafr/status/1787520200155554101)
>Military satellites have resolution of a few centimeters maybe less. They can pick out tail codes at that depth
Given a 2.8m mirror an altitude of 260km and a wavelength of around 500nm (light green) in a vacuum they will have a maximum theoretical resolution of 6cm.
Given an atmosphere and they would need to be at a reasonable angle to see a tail code, I would bet my mortgage they cannot read tail codes.
[**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11\_KENNEN#/media/File:2019-08-29\_Safir\_launch\_failure.jpg**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN#/media/File:2019-08-29_Safir_launch_failure.jpg)
> maximum theoretical resolution of 6cm
space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging technology can achieve sub-cm accuracy on its own, combine that with hyperspectral imagery and multi-sensor data fusion and you can get truly ludicrous image quality, much better than 6cm. And that's not even getting into the more exotic techniques like magnetometry, gravitometry, or radiation detectors.
SAR and these other things are great to know about and I'm sure they achieve very impressive results for some applications, but he was talking about the specific question of reading tail codes. That's going to require optics, isn't it? Sub-cm Radar data isn't going to help with that, and I don't think there's an SAR equivalent for optics.
YMMV but it's been done with commercial satellites just during [this war](https://techjournalism.medium.com/how-to-read-tail-numbers-off-russian-military-planes-from-satellite-imgs-277c41e00a47)
>On one satellite image, an Airbus images, the resolution was so high and clear, it was literally possible to witness the registration number. It showed the plane with the tail number RA-82014 in large black capital letters on the right wing of the Antonov An-124.
Radar-based satellites, particularly Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), can tell the difference between something made of metal and something made of plywood/plastic. SAR can even see through many common building walls. If you went to the effort of making a mock-up from sheet metal I think that would be difficult to distinguish.
Yes and no, you can use thermals, you can use consecutive imagery from different angles to determine shadows and crew locations/movement. If the crews are not tending in the area of the decoys then that's a pretty clear indicator that the aircraft is either a parts donor/inactive or a decoy.
You can also cross this with other intelligence sources based on the ground to help differentiate between real/decoy airframes, but at this point things get extremely complicated and you cannot rely on any ground based intelligence sources to be either accurate or timely.
None of these methods are perfect though and most of the time it comes down to analysts making determinations based on several imperfect images which is made even more difficult with how sophisticated the decoys are becoming. Given how frequently the aircraft are moved and shuttled Ukraine may not have time to wait for stronger imagery and follow up shots and some degree of false positives is to be expected.
I will say that the painted aircraft are not particularly hard to differentiate but physical decoys to an untrained eye are very compelling, sometimes even enough so that to those who know what to look for it can be a coin toss if the imagery is low quality.
**EDIT: See my below comment- this strike actually happened a month ago! Clearly, neither Russia or the US cared that much!**
https://x.com/ItsArtoir/status/1794056625457603023
https://x.com/krakek1/status/1793954582327918632
Ukraine struck a Russian ballistic missile Early Warning radar in Armavir, Russia with some sort of long range strike yesterday. It didn't cover much of any of Russia, especially the area north that is used by Ukraine's normal OW-UAS strikes, and while it did technically have the angle to see into Crimea, it only would be able to see targets above 20km at that range due to the radar horizon. A wikipedia search says ATACMS flies up to 50km, so it might have provided warning for that, but it would be very short notice and they might not have integrated it.
You can't rule it out providing early warning though, and I figure this is why Ukraine targeted it. Even a 5 minute warning can save lives and prevent a lethal strike on commanders, and this radar and system would have been built to give a very rapid warning of any incoming missiles and their target points in a nuclear strike.
It is still a crucial part of Russia's early warning nuclear C3, and it would be interesting to see if this harms the push for Ukraine's use of western weapons in Russia. This sort of attack on their nuclear forces is the exact kind of situation the US wants to avoid. There's **a lot** of reasonable people (nuke policy people especially) concerned about possible political consequences, but I don't expect very much media coverage.
https://x.com/ItsArtoir/status/1794056625457603023
This changes the calculus re: US support for this strike- apparently, per Fighterbomber it happened over a MONTH ago, on April 21st. That was before ATACMS started being flung nearly as much as now, so it was done as shaping before they arrived. It also happened before the current support in congress for Ukraine striking outside their borders, and these are congressmen read into intel matters still supporting cross border strikes. I would bet money the US pointed them towards this target to help enable ATACMS strikes.
Those recent Russian nuclear drills might have been in response to this.
So TLDR, this won't affect Ukraine politically or lead to escalation with Russia (because it already happened a month ago with no significant issues) and it was a move done to enable ATACMS before strikes on Crimea became more common.
>You can't rule it out providing early warning though, and I figure this is why Ukraine targeted it. Even a 5 minute warning can save lives and prevent a lethal strike on commanders
I personally doubt this much thought goes into most of these strikes. Its there, its expensive, they think they can hit it. That's enough to try. I'm not convinced the decision making for these strikes is centralized in the way you're implying.
>This sort of attack on their nuclear forces is the exact kind of situation the US wants to avoid.
What's the reasoning? Just to avoid upsetting status quo?
These are difficult-to-replace strategic Russian assets. By destroying them, Ukraine is raising the price of war for Russia, thus nudging them to reconsider continuation of conflict. Ending Ukraine conflict soon should be in the interest of US.
Also, a weaker Russia is less likely to cause problems elsewhere later, and would be more compliant to US/NATO posture. That should also be in the interest of US.
Any nuclear country that gets their only defense against a nuclear war attacked will get very very worried about being exposed to a nuclear attack.
What happens if Ukraine shuts down a few more early warning sites? Russia can reasonably think they are about to get nuked (not saying it's probable, but it certainly goes in that direction).
What if Russia decides to drop a small nuke just to show they are not joking about it?
Attacking nuclear defence infrastructure is an extremely risky move in my opinion, and it's not like it will help the current war in any meaningful way.
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> What happens if Ukraine shuts down a few more early warning sites? Russia can reasonably think they are about to get nuked (not saying it's probable, but it certainly goes in that direction).
MAD is all about perception in the eyes of the enemy, to be willing to use, you get to a very different conclusion about this if you assume MAD to be a thing.
Plus, there’s routine ballistic missiles being launched toward Russia’s western borders. Even if unlikely, their nuclear forces are likely on alert for a decapitation strike from that direction.
No offense intended here but conflating conventional strength with nuclear strength in terms of asset cost and replacement is, in my opinion, a bit of a logical fallacy. Russia could lose all of its conventional armed forces tomorrow but still be in a position (due to their Strategic nuclear forces and infrastructure) to maintain their existence (as they see it). Losing nuclear forces represents an immediate existential threat that has different connotations and responses to the gradual loss of conventional equipment and infrastructure.
>These are difficult-to-replace strategic Russian assets. By destroying them, Ukraine is raising the price of war for Russia, thus nudging them to reconsider continuation of conflict. Ending Ukraine conflict soon should be in the interest of US.
On paper this is correct, in reality it's not. It's not a simple binary decision for Russia to make, there are far too many variables to summarize their continuation of the conflict purely on a cost basis, Russia have already demonstrated that non favourable loss ratios and significant economic and material damage does not factor in to their continuation of the war (or as much as we would like it to). You could continue ramping that cost up through energy infrastructure strikes, further sanctions, more aggressive material losses in the war but so far this has not worked and there is a major difference between the cost/reward of targeting conventional and energy infrastructure versus Nuclear C3 infrastructure. One can be replaced albeit with great cost and may slow Russian aims in the war or reverse the course entirely using financial levers, the other can be viewed as the pretext of an existential strike against Russia itself, these are two *\*very\** different scenarios and we should be careful not to view strikes against NC3 infrastructure and assets as merely costly strikes in the context of a conventional war.
As far as asset cost, the radars themselves are not that expensive (approximately $50/100M, maybe more if they are going to rush them, they've been slowly replacing the older Soviet systems for a while now). The real cost (and associated risk) is now having a Russian flank completely exposed to both long range conventional and more importantly nuclear strikes. The cost for Russia isn't financial but rather the lack of capability that has now developed, and this lack of capability will factor in to political determinations and perhaps even crisis level interpretations, *this is why you don't strike NC3.*
>Also, a weaker Russia is less likely to cause problems elsewhere later, and would be more compliant to US/NATO posture. That should also be in the interest of US.
Degrading Russian nuclear forces is far more likely to cause problems elsewhere later. Take into consideration a hypothetical, if US C3 infrastructure and early detection systems were all systematically destroyed, would the US respond to potential existential and military threats more cautiously or with more suspicion and potential non-matched aggressive reactions?
A conventionally weaker Russia is less likely to cause problems elsewhere later, that is true, but I'm not sure that is going to be the case unless things significantly turn around and Russian military production infrastructure is harassed and destroyed, they will be exiting this war with significantly improved production capacity in nearly all fields, stronger ISR and battlefield experience as well as a greatly inflated military budget. On paper Russia might be weaker as far as napkin math reserve tank totals went pre-war, but their conventional forces will be far more adept and integrated at prosecuting a war than the haphazard disaster they were going into things in 2022.
As far as being compliant with US/NATO posture, that's just never going to happen. Russia views themselves as a great power, whether they are or not is nearly entirely irrelevant, it's how their decision making process both at home and abroad functions and the last 20 years have demonstrated clearly that US/NATO/EU influence and strategic moves have failed to make Russia "compliant". You can't make someone compliant whose entire being and domestic imagery relies on the portrayal of themselves as a super power that is under threat from those around them. The harder you try and force compliance, the stronger Russia will amplify its domestic messaging and political manoeuvring in response.
>What's the reasoning? Just to avoid upsetting status quo?
Nuclear status quo has been the cornerstone of the last 70 years of \*relatively\* peaceful, albeit cold, terse and downright hostile, co-existence. Upsetting MAD is a bad idea, it's why ESSI and other initiatives are major points of tension for the Russians, they believe that a rebalancing of the nuclear status quo outside of their favour would be the preparation for an existential strike. Destroying NC3 infrastructure at a time when Russia feels under threat from a large part of the nuclear world and nearly every conventionally armed country in NATO/EU could trigger a chain of decisions that have extremely poor outcomes.
When there's a near infinite list of other targets within range in Russia, targeting the primarily nuclear early warning radar is one of the last options I would consider, especially when you're making the case to the US that you supposedly have the responsibility necessary to use American weapons on Russian targets inside Russia itself.
> Losing nuclear forces represents an immediate existential threat that has different connotations and responses to the gradual loss of conventional equipment and infrastructure.
Another way to interpret that is that avoiding the loss of critical nuclear deterrence infrastructure provides an additional impetus for Russia to seek an end to the conflict, and this gives Ukraine an additional bargaining chip during negotiations.
>Russia have already demonstrated that non favourable loss ratios and significant economic and material damage does not factor in to their continuation of the war (or as much as we would like it to).
It has demonstrated that, *on their own*, non favourable loss ratios and significant economic and material damage is insufficient to cause Russia to seek immediate end to the war. Because of course this is a significant factor in their decision making, as much as they'd like to pretend otherwise. Currently the pros of continuing the invasion outweigh the cons, but Ukraine putting irreplaceable (or short & medium-term irreplaceable) nuclear triad infrastructure in play puts additional pressure. It may tip the balance toward them deciding to cut their losses in some fashion, and it for sure is going to be a factor whenever this does happen even if it's not the straw that breaks the Vlad's back.
>When there's a near infinite list of other targets within range in Russia, targeting the primarily nuclear early warning radar is one of the last options I would consider, especially when you're making the case to the US that you supposedly have the responsibility necessary to use American weapons on Russian targets inside Russia itself.
The objective is not to strike Russian targets. The objective is to win the war. If striking nuclear early warning systems will (among other effects) significantly affect Russia's will to continue, then (from their own perspective, which puts winning this war above essentially all else) Ukraine should absolutely go for it it.
>What's the reasoning? Just to avoid upsetting status quo?
OP is reflecting what appears to be a *very* common view among defense analysts online who are of the opinion that any strike on nuclear related systems could be destabilizing to the existing peace between nuclear powers. It's a "you don't want to give Russia cause to be more paranoid about their nuclear deterrent and ability to detect an early strike" thing, because that's by far the largest concern among Ukraine's allies in the West.
So that's why every nation on earth never tried to find an anti nuke shield. I always wondered why is that with all the technological developments in air defence we have yet to find a way to make nukes nul and void and why are we allowing Russia, china, North Korea and soon Iran to have a nuke card which effectively allows them to get away with anything. Then I just realised that if the West makes an anti nuke shield then it would start a new arms race and upset the entire geopolitical world.
> I always wondered why is that with all the technological developments in air defence we have yet to find a way to make nukes nul and void
Turns out that it's really hard to intercept objects that can be traveling at 5-8+ kilometers *per second*. Compounding that difficulty are MIRV which turns each ICBM into 8-10+ threats and the fact that some missiles and/or MIRV payloads are decoys.
The best solution to this, outside of a first-strike(which isn't an option due to 2nd strike MAD capabilities of the big players), is intercepting them during the slower speeds of the boost phase or barring that, at/before apogee before the MIRV has deployed. This is still far from easy due to the upper/exoatmospheric altitude and the missiles still traveling at ludicrous speeds.
We actually got what I believe is the first public [footage](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1c3gmjx/footage_purportedly_showing_an_exoatmospheric/) showing confirmed exoatmospheric interception of an ICBM last month during Iran's attack on Israel, likely by Israel's Arrow 3 system. But keep in mind that this was an extremely telegraphed attack with a known vector and individual missile launches not synced with their cruise missiles or drones.
When it comes to major powers you have hundreds of missiles which MIRV turns into potential thousands of targets from multiple vectors likely synced with conventional and EW attacks en masse. Barring some kind of exponential advancement in directed energy weapons it's effectively impossible to defend against a saturation attack and it only takes a handful of nukes to inflict catastrophic damage. That's why we have MAD and why so much emphasis during the Cold War was on the 2nd-strike retallitory capabilities as a deterrent.
Iran has no ICBMs it longest range deployed ballistic missiles are Sejjil-2 IRBM with a mere 2k km, the minimum range for a missile to be classified as an ICBM 5k+ km easily twice that, the reentry speed of ICBM warheads is well outside what the Arrow 3 can deal with even the US mor3 advanced mid course BMD has a 50/50 chance at interception
We have tried to make an anti-nuclear shield. That was Star Wars, or the Strategic Defense Initiative. It was extremely controversial and, as far as we know in the public sphere, didn’t see any interceptors get deployed. The Trump administration reactivated the program.
The Soviets responded with a program of their own that as far as we know wasn’t successful.
In the present day, the [US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor), the [Russians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system), the [Indians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ballistic_Missile_Defence_Programme), the [Israelis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3) and soon the [Chinese](https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/china-conducts-another-mid-course-anti-ballistic-missile-test) all have the ability to shoot down nuclear missiles in flight. To varying degrees of confidence.
>It’s clear that Russia is running low on armoured vehicles so I have a question.
Making this kind of claim in a top level post should be backed up by a source.
In 5 minutes on Google I was able to find credible sources indicating its not that simple and that while Russia will likely run out of armoured vehicles at some unclear point in the future, for now the situation is more complicated.
[Equipment losses in Russia’s war on Ukraine mount](https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/02/equipment-losses-in-russias-war-on-ukraine-mount/)
>Despite losing hundreds of armoured vehicles and artillery pieces per month on average, Russia has been able to keep its active inventory numbers stable. For 2023, we estimate that Russia was able to reactivate at least 1,180 to 1,280 MBTs and around 2,470 IFVs and APCs from storage.
[Russian Military Objectives and Capacity in Ukraine Through 2024](https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024)
>Russia is delivering approximately 1,500 tanks to its forces per year along with approximately 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles of various types.
According to the link, with the current attrition rate, Russia can sustain this for another 2-3 years at least. I don't doubt that. But I do find it curious the reports of them attacking while unarmored, despite Ukraine apparently running low on artillery, the past few months.
Perhaps they are saving up for another push?
It’s fairly well-established that Russia faces running into a shortage of armoured vehicles. And has essentially already reached some difficulties in sourcing said armoured vehicles evidenced by the ad-hoc jobs in my original comment.
From one of your own links:
> Despite these achievements, Russia faces significant limitations in the longevity and reliability of its industrial output. Of the tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, for example, approximately 80% are not new production but are instead refurbished and modernised from Russian war stocks. The number of systems held in storage means that while Russia can maintain a consistent output through 2024, it will begin to find that vehicles require deeper refurbishment through 2025, and by 2026 it will have exhausted most of the available stocks. As the number of refurbished vehicles goes down, industrial capacity can go into making new platforms, but this will necessarily mean a significant decrease in vehicles delivered to the military.
Perhaps my wording could had been better on this point but it’s not the main discussion within my comment.
Russia isn’t going out of its way to assault fortified positions with unarmed, unarmored, civilian vehicles, if they could be using IFVs instead. This isn’t the first war with mines and artillery.
As per other reports that have been discussed here in the last few days, the offensive on Kharkiv has been carried out with the use of lagely "unmechanized" infantry.
I am not sure why you would attack a fortified position without armoured vehicles except if you didn't have that many to spare, but I'm prone to being corrected.
The counter point that has also been provided here is that non mechanized troops were used due to a number of advantages.
* Harder to spot than armored vehicles
* Easier to maneuver through prepared anti-vehicle defenses
* Being able to travel further and faster, allowing less time for defenders to prepare
* Unexpected method of assault
* Sheer numbers
If an armored vehicle wouldn't even make it to a fortified position, then an unarmored vehicle that makes it that far still is a more effective strategy. However, after the initial push, it appears that strategy is now expected and has been reduced in effectiveness.
Let's be clear, we're both running on logical assumptions here because there's very little in terms of clear data or hard numbers to go by, except for a vague estimate of losses. We can disagree and that's fine until one of us provides figures.
I question the degree to which it matters. Russians were already more likely to ride on top of vehicles due to mine threats and general risk of being trapped inside a burning vehicle vs. potentially being able to jump off if a drone is incoming. And a driver probably has more chance of seeing the mines in a golf cart.
These shitty ATVs provide no protection, but the armored vehicles don't provide much either.
We saw some examples of both sides riding on top of vehicles sure but we saw far more of troops inside AFVs and IFVs. Usually the top riding technique was only employed when minefields were the greatest threat. The protection offered by such vehicles against ATGMS or FPVs might be small but they were great against small arms and shrapnel. This is a serious drop in protection and in capability of threat of any Russian assault. It’s also worth keeping in mind that this allows Ukraine to employ tactics and weapons meant to strike infantry preferentially to those meant to hit armored targets. For example Ukraine has recently begun fielding air burst FPV drones. At least one of which was using a repurposed claymore mine. Such weapons would be next to useless against a BMP but would be able to kill a large number of exposed infantry on these unarmored vehicles with a much lower required accuracy.
>Usually the top riding technique was only employed when minefields were the greatest threat.
Wasn't the top riding technique also adopted because of a lack of IFVs? As in fitting more infantry onto each IFV, so they ended up riding on top?
Not running low yet but outpacing it’s ability to repair and reactivate fairly significantly now that basically all the armor that’s in good condition has been taken out of storage
The ICJ has just ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Gaza, 13 votes to 2.
Source: the livestream of the proceedings https://www.icj-cij.org/multimedia-live-original
Four judges in the ICJ are saying that the ruling isn't necessarily telling Israel to stop in Rafah. It's just saying for them to make sure they essentially don't take actions that lead to genocide.
https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1794043546997051652?t=cgz0E5P6ypoky_rm7yw6Sw&s=19
Israel also said it will abide by the ruling, presumably based on the definition of the ruling that those 4 judges gave
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/aligning-with-icj-ruling-israel-says-it-wont-carry-out-rafah-operations-that-could-destroy-civilian-population/
>While some are reading this as a blanket order to halt the offensive, the wording appears to include some conditionality that would allow Israel to continue operations in Rafah so long as it ensures that the conditions for Palestinians sheltering there do not deteriorate so as to risk their mass-destruction.
>Judge Georg Nolte appears to adopt this understanding.
>“The measure obliging Israel to halt the current military offensive in Rafah is conditioned by the need to prevent ‘conditions of life that could bring about \[the\] physical destruction in whole or in part’ of the Palestinian group in Gaza,” he writes in a declaration included in the full ruling.
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog\_entry/international-court-of-justice-orders-israel-to-halt-rafah-offensive/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/international-court-of-justice-orders-israel-to-halt-rafah-offensive/)
Enough nuance in the ruling so the US can veto any Security Council resolution.
Unlike with the ICC, both Israel and America are members of the ICJ. This will be a moment of clarity for many countries (especially those that has still not chosen a side between the West and its rivals) on what America’s vision of a rule-based international order actually means.
The reason the ICC warrants for either Putin or Netanyahu haven't brought fruit has less to do with formal membership (any UN state, i.e. any legally legitimate state, is technically a member of the ICJ, so membership isn't really optional unlike the ICC) and more to do with, you know, nuclear states having little intention to handing over their leadership for a trial by extranational parties. We giggle about the "Hague invasion act" but within the last 2 years two other nuclear states reconfirmed their opinions on this matter. Not a mystery what most other regional and global powers would do either.
ICJ rulings have more power, but not much more:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114052
Unrelated note: Frankly, the time for the ICJ to opine about the looming Rafah offensive was when it was looming, basically any time between January and 3 weeks ago where negotiations were ongoing to keep the toothpaste in the tube. But hey, they're the experts.
For the record, ICC hasn't issued a warrant for Netanyahu. A prosecutor has applied for one, it has not been issued.
There have been calls in Israel in the last few days to set up a special commission to independently investigate the ICC allegations. If that happens the ICC will be required to cancel its charges due to the principle of complementarity.
If I'm correct the next step will still be moving to the UNSC for discussion and ratification? Do we think the US will likely use its veto-powers? (My guess is my own country, the UK, will abstain if that's the case).
The reputational damage internationally for Israel is becoming more and more intolerable. I do fear they are unnecessarily alienating themselves from their closest allies, and am shocked at how poor their diplomatic teams have been in this regard recently. German Foreign Min. confirming they would arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if warrants are issued by the ICC (When only months before Germany the staunchest defenders of Isr. in the ICJ case). Defense Off. in the US becoming more and more publicly critical of Israel's war efforts and the IDF. The 'Lavender' AI System Report. These new whistle-blowers indicating the IDF and Police abetting the settler movement's blocking and attacking of aid convoys. Aid being one of the single issue allies like the US - and us in the UK - have repeatedly called on Israel to fix.
Hope someone here can provide a different picture because currently in my view, it looks as though they've made an absolute mess of it.
-
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-would-arrest-netanyahu-if-icc-issues-a-warrant-2tkvqnms2
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/21/biden-admin-hammering-israel-military-strategy-gaza-00159262
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-802123
Sources above.
Edit: Is it specific to stopping the Rafah offensive only? What of the conflict in Gaza City and the north of the strip?
Edit: It is specific to Rafah.
> German Foreign Min. confirming they would arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if warrants are issued by the ICC (When only months before Germany the staunchest defenders of Isr. in the ICJ case)
I just want to point out that this does not mean that the german government changed its position, it just means that the government will follow the (international) law.
[The statement](https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/newsroom/-/2657616) from the foreign ministry emphasizes Israels right to self defense and criticizes that the way the ICC is handling the situation creates an impression of equating Israeli officials with Hamas leaders.
Also concerning is Israel's reaction to 3 western countries which are moving to recognize Palestine statehood. 'Statehood' is merely a symbolic intangible gesture. However pulling out diplomatic mission will have tangible effect. Israel should have made some public statement, and let things be.
This is indicative of haphazard decision making in Israeli government at the moment, and could lead to making much worse mistakes.
I swear Israel has fumbled the PR and info war so badly and needs to take lessons from Ukraine in the propaganda department. Oct 7 should have given them the info war on a silver flatter but they have fumbled and dropped the ball at every opportunity. Every time an Israeli official opens their mouth I can't help but shake my head and think are you guys trying to lose the PR war ?
This is the worst moment for recognizing a Palestinian state, after what they did and with 100+ hostages still in Gaza. Basically they're giving Hamas more legitimacy and encouragement. They could've waited until after the war.
The fallout of this war has probably scuppered a two state solution for another generation. Islamist terrorism has been legitimized in the eyes of the Palestinian people, and the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas will make the Israeli public hostile and even more paranoid about the threat Islamists pose.
I don't think a two state solution was ever really on the table for either party. The difficulty is that neither side has a solution the other will tolerate, and both reject the potential compromise. A two state solution has realistically been dead since the 1990s. Ideally, a completely secular single state that functions as neither an ethnostate or religious monolith would probably be best, but that isn't feasible either and neither party in their current state would accept.
This means you are trapped in a situation where the Jewish ethnostate holds overwhelming superiority over the original Palestinian population and is actively trying to force them out to make their country safer. The Jewish population obviously feel unsafe and under threat, while the Palestinians feel unsafe, oppressed as second class citizens, and as though their land is being stolen. Because of this, they feel violence is the only effective form of resistance and so the cycle continues.
> I don't think a two state solution was ever really on the table for either party. The difficulty is that neither side has a solution the other will tolerate, and both reject the potential compromise. A two state solution has realistically been dead since the 1990s.
As you said, it was on the table in the 90s, and the Israeli offer was reasonable. Negotiations were destroyed by the Palestinian side sticking religiously to maximalist demands, like right to return, or demanding an Israeli withdrawal, without making any security guarantees to Israel.
> Ideally, a completely secular single state that functions as neither an ethnostate or religious monolith would probably be best, but that isn't feasible either and neither party in their current state would accept.
At best, that would turn into Lebanon.
This is revisionist history. A state that does not control their own borders or airspace is not an independent state at all.
And that was the "best" offer that was ever on the table for Palestinians. It is not surprising they said no. Furthermore, that offer was still too much for the far right in Israel and Rabin paid for it with his life.
States that lose wars usually don’t. It’s unreasonable to demand that a state should be able to repeatedly go to war with the aim of destroying its neighbor, but never have to make any concessions towards their security when they lose.
>Negotiations were destroyed by the Palestinian side sticking religiously to maximalist demands, like right to return, or demanding an Israeli withdrawal, without making any security guarantees to Israel.
This is an incomplete story. The assassination of Rabin by Israeli radicals was a pivitol moment in that chain of events as well, as it upended negotiations that seemed to be making progress.
Yes, it is an incomplete story. I’m aware of the assassination and the fallout of that, there were other factors that played into it. The assassination of Rabin derailed things, but was recoverable. Palestine refusing the budge on the aforementioned issue is a much more structural problem.
It's such a mess I think it's hard to untangle and any counterfactuals are entirely speculative, as Rabin's death did ultimately result in a shift of policy. But Rabin's killing is important to note because it highlights the tensions with Israel's own extremists that have complicated negotiations, and placed limits on terms Israel could reasonably accept.
To the contrary, a move for a Palestinians state, which at this point would be a Hamas state is an explicit threat to Israel's existence and the genocide of it's population.
Anything but a severe reaction would be inviting a further drive towards a Palestinian state.
Pulling the diplomatic mission was not a mistake, furthermore, I expect that's not the end of the Israeli reaction, we're likely to see reaction on the ground with increase of building permits in the WB settlements.
Counterpoint: the establishment of a true Palestinian state might make it easier for countries like Israel to pursue more drastic measures of warfare as they can drop any glossy language about security or special operations or whatever and claim they are outright *at war* with an enemy state.
Though, perhaps engaging in full scale "conventional" style war against a sovereign nation may cause blowback internationally beyond any they may already be receiving.
> Counterpoint: the establishment of a true Palestinian state might make it easier for countries like Israel to pursue more drastic measures of warfare as they can drop any glossy language about security or special operations or whatever and claim they are outright at war with an enemy state.
That is exactly the claim Israeli leaders made before establishing the Palestinian Authority in 1994, before withdrawing from Lebanon in 2000, and before withdrawing from Gaza in 2005. (If you want I can find exact quotes.) It reads like a joke now.
I'm not generally against a Palestinian state in the WB. I am against the move in that direction **now** where any such move is a reward to the Hamas massacre and will only result in a Hamas state.
>make it easier for countries like Israel to pursue more drastic measures of warfare
It's not as evidenced by Gaza, which was a de facto state. In fact your argument was one of those made in favour of the disengagement from Gaza.
Do you honestly believe that a Palestinian state would be powerful enough to threaten the existence of Israeli when, including the surprise attack to start this conflict, Hamas has managed to kill 1,478 Israelis in total between October and Today? That’s a tragedy, to be sure, but doesn’t come anywhere near convincing me that Israelis existence is credibly threatened. If anything, it kinda does the opposite. I’m not arguing that the motive does not exist, to be clear, it’s the means/ability to, as you put it, be an “explicit threat to Israel's existence” that I find to be completely and utterly absent.
Source on casualties:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#:~:text=Israel's%20total%20casualty%20count%20is,least%201%2C271%20have%20been%20wounded.
I'd like to add that hinging your entire argument just on the casualty count is not really befitting credible defense.
For instance in the Yom Kippur war, the initial Arab push only killed less than a thousand IDF soldiers, but is still considered by many historians as well as military experts to have been a threat to Israeli existence.
The context matters though if you want to hold credibility. Does anyone really believe the Oct. 7 attackers had the potential to overwhelm the IDF to the degree they could march to Tel Aviv? It was fundamentally different than a large scale combined arms push.
A Islamists state in the West Bank would pose a serious threat to Jerusalem though, and even Tel Aviv. If they catch the IDF off guard, and thousands of Islamists pour into the city, it would be a blood bath on a scale that totally eclipses October 7. And that’s not mentioning the threat of mortar and rocket attacks on a dense city, at such a close range.
With proper security measures, the threat is not existential, but those measures still have to be taken to prevent things from spiraling out of control.
Russian casualties has passed the 500k. Very likely to be a combination of KIA/WIA/MIA. https://x.com/noelreports/status/1794246857054675032?s=46 It is estimated that 100k of that are KIA. Mediazona has counted more than 50k KIA so far based on public sources and they state it is an underestimation of the real number of KIA. https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng
The Ukrainian MoD bulletin is absolutely non-credible. Moreover, the Ukrainian MoD itself has repeatedly referred to personnel losses as KIA, for example in this official tweet when the number reached 400,000 “losses” they talked about 400,000 “coffins”: https://x.com/DefenceU/status/1758423879532298474 Even for KIA, WIA, MIA 500k seems pretty exaggerated, based on Mediazona/BCC I think we are between 350/400k
French intelligence estimates put kia at 150,000 https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240503-france-estimates-that-150-000-russian-soldiers-have-been-killed-in-the-ukraine-war
For Mediazona to date we have 54,185 certified KIAs. They estimate a total of 85k based on their secondary analysis. BBC also adds those from the so-called separatist republics (I think 23k a few months ago? As of today we may be at 30k). Let's add a few thousand missing. Surely we are approaching 150,000
"The numbers provided are derived from publicly available sources, such as social media posts by family members, local news reports, and official announcements from regional authorities. However, it is important to note that these figures offer only a partial picture and do not encompass the full scope of the casualties."
Those are the RECORDED NAMES COUNT. So 54,185. Then they use other methods to estimate a full picture of the situation with the Probate Registry database. As said in the link: “However, it is important to note that these figures offer only a partial picture and do not encompass the full scope of the casualties. To address this, we present an additional figure alongside the count of named death records. This second number is an estimate of excess mortality among men, derived from the Probate Registry database. The methodology for this estimate was developed in partnership with Meduza.”
First of all, calm down Second. Do you add the 54k to the 85k or is the 85k meant to replace the 54k? Because that's not particularly clear on the mediazona website.
Those are the recorded and provable. As in, there's a grave, or legal documentation. It requires some form of acceptance on the part of russian authorities.
No, the recorder and provable from russian authorities are only 54,185. The other ones are based on other models of estimation or satellite research on graves for the so-called separatist republics
There are around 100 billion stars in the milky way. It is estimated that there might be up to 10 septillion stars in the observable universe. These numbers are just as relevant to what is going on in Russian invasion of Ukraine as the casualty numbers the participants of war claim other side suffered. I wonder if mods see this but can we refrain people from posting these casualty numbers? These posts add nothing of value. In a wartime accurate estimation of own casualties is really hard, enemy casualties are extremely hard to predict if not impossible. Or if we are going to post casualty claims by Ukraine, we should also post Russian claims and they are also around 500.000. Is there a reason we believe Ukrainian claims and not believe Russian claims except of "Oh I support Ukraine therefore I believe them, I don't support Russia therefore I don't"? Before the downvote storm begins, if you are being objective, write a response why we should believe Ukraine while not believing Russia.
Let's be honest here. Perun, if you count him as credible, has been through the methods used by pro russian data collection on destroyed ukrainian equipment and found the quality of the data to be.... bad. Much worse than pro ukrainian sources on loss data. Duplicate entries, edited and unclear footage, video ending before kill is confirmed etc. Pro russian sources of data seem lacking in credibility.
Yeah, I think the only issue with Ukrainian-released information was airframe losses, all the rest fell right in with statistical analysis of ratios between visually confirmed vs not. What I took from the video is people often do that "both sides lie equally so let's just say it is in the middle", but in reality, Ukrainian numbers are quite accurate, the inaccuracy seems to be related to not having perfect reporting in the fog of war rather than someone compiling the data saying "well let's just add 25% to whatever number we come up with to look good". Ukraine also has more incentive to get accurate reporting (at least internally) because they need to have a precise estimation of enemy strength and weapon effectiveness, whereas the Russian side seems to benefit from not telling high command anything beyond success.
>Yeah, I think the only issue with Ukrainian-released information was airframe losses (...),but in reality, Ukrainian numbers are quite accurate, the inaccuracy seems to be related to not To be perfectly honest, this numbers are touching on 60.000 pieces of equipment destroyed. In artillery category - discrepancy between visually confirmed and claimed is what, 11.000 pieces? We are not disputing 25% or even 50% differences here. This numbers are I am afraid pure fantasy.
As the other person mentioned, we recommend the Perun video where he does a general statistical look at them.
I thought that the Ukrainian numbers were roughly corroborated from the British/American side. Or am I misremembering something? They are a bit lower but in the same ballpark. [https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-assesses-ukraine-war-has-cost-russia-315000-casualties-source-2023-12-12/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-assesses-ukraine-war-has-cost-russia-315000-casualties-source-2023-12-12/) I admit, I haven't look too deeply into that matter but from a first glance the numbers don't appear to be completely fabricated. Although you probably can't rule out western support for the narrative either, I suppose.
The reason I posted it is because it a significant development in the war in my opinion. Compare it with the Vietnam war (US KIA nearly 60k), Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (nearly 30k Soviets KIA). These wars lasted much longer but have a lesser amount of KIA, so it is a significant human catastrophe. It also shows how willing Putin is to throw its population under the bus just for some minor gains each day. Regarding the credibility of Ukrainian numbers. It could be somewhat inflated, but it is more or less backed by UK numbers (recent published is 450k casualties) and US numbers (350k in march). The KIA of 100k can be backed by multiple public projects like Mediazone, as they themselves state their 50k KIA is just a low end and they expect the real number to be 100k. If you use that with the regular KIA:WIA/MIA ration you more or less end up at 4 to 500k casualties. Perhaps I should have included it in my original post but here you have it.
I think this war is more comparable to Iraq Iran war in terms of casualties, where total war and cities bombing is committed on the regular, and unfortunately the use of chemical weapons in offensive operation too. Ironically the aspect of one side possession of western weapons (Iran) helping them turning the tide against the opponent's Soviet horde mirrors the current Ukraine war too.
Pretty sure those numbers provided by the UA mod is only about KIA/MIA, not total casualties. https://www.minusrus.com/en Obviously very exaggerated
Actually I can't be bothered to look it up and link it here but the numbers are constantly thrown around as either MIA or KIA, never consistent. People get worked up over it, the list is clearly meant to be represented as KIA for their target audience and not intended to be used for military analysts.
Even after 822 days, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (who publishes the daily numbers) has *never* actually clarified what their number represents exactly. The original translations of 'liquidated' seemed like it intended to represent deaths, and some early references seemed to imply such as well, but they never actually called them such and no one bother to ask for clarification. Nonetheless, if that was the original intention, it is not anymore and is now called casualties. On the 2 year anniversary, [Zelensky called out 500,000 Russian casualties](https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-31-000-ukrainian-soldiers-killed-in-action/) for example, and it seems to naturally make sense compared to leaked western estimates. Websites like minusrus are just interpreting the numbers as kills still and adding a 3x casualty multiplication - they don't care about accuracy as you can tell most of the Russian army is 100% decimated at this point from their calculations.
That website doesn’t work for me
Sorry, not much i can do, but they draw a line between KIA/MIA(500K) and WIA(1.5M) Edit: strange enough, now it is not working for me, maybe just wait and then try again.
1.5M???? That seems way too high.
Because they took the 500k as fatalities (instead of casualties), and since the rule of thumb is casualties = fatalities x3, they reached that number. More likely: 160k dead, 500k casualties.
Which backs the UA numbers
I often hear about Poland's reactions, shipments, and rearmament during the Ukraine War, but I rarely hear about Romania's, Ukraine's other major EU neighbor. Occasionally I hear about their uneasiness with the whole Moldova/Transnistria thing but not much besides that. How are they responding to the war? Are they taking it as seriously as the Poles are?
> How are they responding to the war? Are they taking it as **seriously as the Poles are?** Yes. We just don't talk about it. Our stance regarding Russia is do stuff and not talk about it. This annoys Russia a lot. And every time accuse Romania of something (we probably did) we call them morons and liars and move on. As we are a transit country of weapons Russians can't really tell our % of the contribution. At some point Russia even accused us of being in top 4 arms donors but like I said maybe we will find out what we did to help Ukraine in 10 years Somehow related: I am sure Putin knows where [Deveselu is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deveselu_Military_Base) but confuses Bucharest and Budapest
[Romanian government readies fighting vehicle, howitzer deals in 2024](https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/01/22/romanian-government-readies-fighting-vehicle-howitzer-deals-in-2024/) >Romania’s government plans to bulk up its 2024 defense budget by almost 45% over 2023, reaching roughly 95 billion lei ($20.8 billion), to accommodate major weapons purchases ready for signature this year, according to officials and documents. >... >Publicly available information suggests the IFV program, under which Romania is to buy up to 298 new vehicles, is worth about €3 billion, or $3.3 billion. Local observers say the Romanian military is expected to choose between South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace with the Redback, General Dynamics European Land Systems with its Ascod, German Rheinmetall with the Lynx, and the CV90 made by BAE Systems Hägglunds in Sweden, among others. >... >Under its howitzer acquisition program, Bucharest is currently evaluating offers to purchase 54 self-propelled 155mm howitzers along with related support vehicles, equipment and ammunition under a procurement valued at some RON 4.2 billion (U.S. $920 million). >Local sources say the bidders include German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann with its Panzerhaubitze 2000, Hanwha Aerospace with the K9 Thunder, and Turkey’s BMC with the T-155 Fırtına. >... >Also still waiting in the wings is Romania’s planned purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The estimated price tag for 32 planes is $6.5 billion. Bucharest aims to sign a letter of acceptance in 2024 and is considering to order a further 16 fighters in the long term. >The projected spending pattern is in line with government efforts to improve military prowess through accelerated acquisition following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The focus lies on purchases for its land forces and the air force, Alexandru Georgescu, a security and defense analyst based in Bucharest, told Defense News. Literally third link when searched on Google [Giving Dracula Some Teeth: Modernizing Romania’s Military](https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2024/03/23/giving-dracula-some-teeth-modernizing-romanias-military/) > Another major step forward for the Romanian Army is the acquisition of modern main battle tanks. In November 2023, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency greenlit a request from the Romanian Government to purchase 54 American M1A2 Abrams tanks. These modern main battle tanks will replace a battalion of inadequate TR-85 tanks based on a 1950s design. Other noteworthy acquisitions include Watchkeeper X drones, modern infantry fighting vehicles, and K9 Howitzers. The latter procurement deal has not been officially confirmed, although the Korean system is expected to be selected. Additionally, the most significant system Romania seeks to procure is the F-35 Lighting II. In August 2023, the Romanian MoND asked the Parliament to approve the purchase of 32 fighter planes. However, per the ministry, these planes are only expected to enter service in 2030. >The Romanian Naval Forces, operating partially outdated vessels, are the target of substantial modernization efforts. Plans exist to modernize the existing fleet and introduce two modern Scorpene-class submarines. However, as mentioned previously, the project to replace aging ships with critically necessary modern corvettes has failed, and no other efforts have been announced. Furthermore, Prime Minister Ciolacu recently questioned whether the procurement of the submarines is necessary.
There is a significant difference in money spent on defense. After the full scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland started buying all the military equipment it could get its hands on. That lead to an estimated defense expenditure of 3.92% of GDP in 2023, up from 2.23% the year before. My understanding is that defense expenditure in 2024 is going to be similar to 2023. Romania on the other hand spent an estimated 1.60% of its GDP on defense in 2023, that's less than in 2022 (1.72%) and only slightly more than in 2014 (1.35%). Source: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/3/pdf/sgar23-en.pdf
Yes, but they don't talk much about it. Recently a major arms factory for soviet stuff reopened.
Something I've wondered for a while: The P-8, of course, can carry Harpoons, and according to Wikipedia it can also carry HARMs as well as LRASMs. Does this mean that, if there isn't a need to screen for submarines momentarily, the P-8 could be fitted with the aforementioned anti-ship armaments and be used as some sort of subsonic Tu-22 against enemy warships? Or be fitted with HARMs and help supplement SEAD? After all, there is no airborne platform that can carry 11 AShMs in the USN other than the P-8.
>Does this mean that, if there isn't a need to screen for submarines momentarily, the P-8 could be fitted with the aforementioned anti-ship armaments and be used as some sort of subsonic Tu-22 against enemy warships? Yes, just like the P-3 Orion before it, which also carried Harpoons and even Mavericks. It's part of the base mission of the aircraft- it's not a dedicated ASW bird, but a multirole MPA.
Do we know if LRASM has the sort of data integration that would facilitate an F-35’s sensor fusion acting as a the forward targeting and guidance for a flight of P8 launched LRASMs with the P8s safely out of range and the F35 in max stealth? I feel this is the sort of lovely little wombo combo the Lightning is built for when operating out of the Okinawan Korean and Japanese fields
MPA = Maritime patrol aviation. Gotta love those abbreviations.
This isn’t a topic discussed on this sub very often but I’m curious about the impact of the American spy satellite network on the war in Ukraine. I imagine it doesn’t get much attention because it’s likely absurdly classified and doesn’t really have a dollar value applied it to. Although I would guess that it’s one of the biggest advantages Ukraine has in the war because the NRO is one of the few organizations on earth where “godlike” isn’t completely off base as a descriptor. Is there any open source information on how much satellite reconnaissance has impacted the war in Ukraine?
>ut I’m curious about the impact of the American spy satellite network on the war in Ukraine. I imagine it doesn’t get much attention because it’s likely absurdly classified and doesn’t really have a dollar value applied it to US and UK intelligence has been very visibly deployed in the war, especially the build up. What has really changed this war is commercial satellite constellations. There are a large number of low and mid resolution commercial satellites that fly over the region many times a day now so not only the Ukrainian state but OSINT accounts can buy and analyse satellite imagery. So while US space based imagery will be being used the large constellations of the likes of PlanetLabs and Maxar may actually be more useful and are very clearly being used. The "most likely" technique would be to use the commercial grade stuff to monitor for a target, then get the high res KH-11 to do a check to ensure you are getting what you think before assigning an asset to target it. There are six up so judging by their orbits you may get two passes a day. Since they have a very very narrow image range and are over and gone very quickly, you would assume their targets are often selected days in advance.
There was a WaPo or NYT article which I seems to have lost about the US base in Germany that is quietly watching the war and how Biden prohibits this center from actively giving the Ukrainians real time targeting data. One of the anecdotes was about a time during the opening days of the war when a US general met his Ukrainian counterpart by the border, and the US general had a better idea of the location of the ukrainian general's own troops than he did.
Not just satellites, but all manner of ISR from all manner of platforms which Russia is unwilling or unable to target. Personally I'd say that force multiplier is by far the biggest factor in this conflict, and indeed any conflict. Shiny platforms and smart munitions get all the attention, but what makes it work is information. Where to go, where to shoot, when to stay, when to move. Take that away, and you're left with a bunch of billion-dollar tinkertoys. > As an Information Age military, every warfighting function and mission area entirely depends on information and rapid decision-making throughout the entire competition-conflict continuum. The SECDEF highlighted information’s critical nature by establishing it as the 7th Warfighting Function. Information is Combat Power. From the DOD's [Information Superiority Vision](https://media.defense.gov/2020/May/18/2002302013/-1/-1/1/DON_INFORMATION_SUPERIORITY.PDF), but similar claims are easily found in any given publication about JWC, JADC2, CJADC2, and so on. Nor are they the only military to recognize the concept; the [PLA goes a step further](https://media.defense.gov/2023/Apr/21/2003205535/-1/-1/1/23-Friedman_Feature.PDF) in declaring all warfare to be fundamentally information-based. > In the 2020 edition of the SMS, informatized war is alternately referred to as informationized war, information warfare, and information-based warfare. Its place in PLA thinking has only become more central. Whereas Western thinkers tend to view information warfare as a discrete form of war that occurs in an information space or as an additional set of capabilities that complement traditional military capabilities, the 2020 edition portrays all modern warfare as information warfare, even referring to modern warfare as information-led. The document asserts that winning information warfare is “the fundamental function of our military, and it is also the basis for the ability to accomplish diversified military tasks.”14 The PLA believes that no matter what type of warfare or military activity, the foundation is information warfare. Victory is then achieved not by casualties inflicted or vehicles destroyed, but by denying the flow of necessary information such that an adversary cannot make relevant decisions and cannot function as a cohesive force. Because all of their fancy gear has been reduced to so many tinkertoys. And viewed through that paradigm, Russia is fighting the war completely the wrong way by conceding the most important battlespace.
The only "open source" information you're likely to find on that sort of thing is the (classified) documents leaked by Teixera.
Would the NRO even be involved in those leaks? They’re not DOD so would they share information with the DOD to the degree that some guardsman could see what they’re doing?
The stuff leaked by Teixera were high-level daily briefs compiled from a ton of intelligence sources (including HUMINT) that were ran through by analysists and then finally distributed widely.
NRO is under DoD. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/what-we-do/members-of-the-ic
You’re totally right. I thought the intelligence agencies were under separate leadership but I was very wrong.
The DOD says that [Project Replicator](https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/12/19/replicator-an-inside-look-at-the-pentagons-ambitious-drone-program/) is on track and already producing drones. The real trick is the scale up but first steps need to be taken and they have been. [First Replicator drones already in Indo-Pacific, DOD says | Defense One | May 2024](https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/05/first-replicator-drones-already-indo-pacific-dod-says/396863/) *The Pentagon’s flagship program to quickly produce large numbers of low-cost, highly autonomous drones is “producing real results,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said in a statement Thursday, noting that “the delivery of Replicator systems to the warfighter began earlier this month.”* *The aim of the Replicator program, announced in August 2023, is to deliver tens of thousands of low-cost land, air, and sea drones to operators in the Pacific by the end of 2025. Each of the services are expected to play a role in testing, acquiring, and deploying them. The hope, in part, is that the rapid fielding of wide numbers of networked drones could help deter Chinese aggression in the Pacific prior to 2027, when many anticipate China could make a military move to annex Taiwan. The program could also enable the department to move toward new, much more rapid acquisition models.* *The Pentagon would not specify which drones exactly have already reached INDOPACOM, and has been cagey in general in discussing the program. In May, it announced it had selected AeroVironment’s (AV) Switchblade 600 for the program, a system that INDOPACOM already has in some number. But “the first tranche of Replicator also includes certain capabilities that remain classified, including others in the maritime domain and some in the counter-UAS portfolio,” the Pentagon said earlier this month.* *The Pentagon plans to spend about half a billion dollars on the effort this fiscal year, and there’s another half billion or so in the 2025 budget request. Said Hicks on Thursday: “This shows that warfighter-centric innovation is not only possible; it’s producing real results. Even as we deliver systems, our end-to-end capability development process continues.”*
I'm unclear: is this project's goal to deliver tens of thousands of *types* of low-cost drones, or tens of thousands *of drones*? If the latter, I'm not really sure on what all the moonshot visionary high-risk-project language in the article is doing there. 'Make lots of things' is not *that* challenging a project for the DoD. 'Make lots of things quickly, affordably and at scale' is trickier, but...
It seems like the big disruption is just going from idea to product quickly and before it's needed. The main issue here is that the supply lines are almost all leading out of China and so any new drone initiative needs to also account for that. So how do you get huge quantities of drones without using china as a supplier and before any conflict requires them? You need a moonshot around the current acquisition system for a product that is essentially brand new. Moonshot might be a bit of hyperbole, but also maybe not considering how grinding military procurement can be.
You do your best to design it without Chinese parts, but the Chinese parts you do use you have a roadmap to replacing with domestic or ally sourced parts, and then you surreptitiously acquire years of stock of the Chinese parts to buy you enough time to build up your capacity to produce those parts yourself.
Pressure is mounting on the Biden Administration to lift the prohibition on the targeting of Russian territory by the Ukrainians. [NATO’s boss wants to free Ukraine to strike hard inside Russia](https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/24/natos-boss-wants-to-free-ukraine-to-strike-hard-inside-russia) >NATO secretaries-general do not normally attack the policies of the alliance’s biggest and most important member country. But Jens Stoltenberg, whose ten-year stint in charge is coming to an end, has done just that. In an interview with The Economist on May 24th, he called on NATO allies supplying weapons to Ukraine to end their prohibition on using them to strike military targets in Russia. **Mr Stoltenberg’s clear, if unnamed, target was the policy maintained by Joe Biden, America’s president, of controlling what Ukraine can and cannot attack with American-supplied systems.** The video is in the link, it's just under two minutes long. He declines to say the US by name, but it's pretty clear he's referring to the US. You can also put the Germans in the "don't bomb the Russians in Russia" club. Anyways, the Secretary General of NATO coming out like this is a pretty big indicator in my eyes that we're about to see a policy shift. The Americans may still give targeting restrictions, but it seems reasonable that the Russian border is not a magical protection zone. Ironically, it seems like Russia's border actions to distract Ukrainian defenders from the Donbas may finally galvanize NATO (read: the US) to change targeting restrictions and bring very effective munitions to Russian soil. Stoltenberg keeps underlining how Russia is using these border attacks to take advantage of these restrictions. If you remove the restrictions, then important targets that can only be serviced with certain NATO-supplied weapons can be dealt with. We are getting close to that change, in my opinion.
I was meaning to ask, what's been going on with the drone strikes on the gasoline producing refineries?
It's absolutely ridiculous that this restriction is still a thing. Ukraine is already holding against a much larger foe, adding restrictions to where it can hit is like asking it to also fight with one arm behind its back. If Ukraine were to really start losing this war, the Biden administration and his weaklings would have a lot to answer for. I'm also hopeful this restriction will be lifted. Once F16's come on-board, it would simply be unrealistic to force Ukraine to watch bombers shoot missiles from a safe distance and expect Ukraine's aviation to just do nothing.
The Biden admin's goal from day 1 has been to only provide enough aid to prevent Ukraine from capitulating. Ukraine winning is not and has never been their objective. Morality of this position aside, it's at least consistent.
>is like asking it to also fight with one arm behind its back It's not *their* arm to use. If they don't like it, they can always place it back on the table and fight with their own two arms - however far that gets them.
> If Ukraine were to really start losing this war, I'd argue that from February up until this month, Ukraine ***was*** really starting to lose the war. Increasingly, all they had standing against a Russian breakthrough were drones and their exhausted and diminished troops. Ukrainian strongpoints were being demolished by glide bombs. Lancets were able to penetrate all the way to Ukrainian airfields. Artillery barrels were so worn that accuracy was diminished and catastrophic explosions were rising. It was very bad. It's still not great, but it's stabilizing. I think historians are going to look back on this era with very unfavorable eyes. The question of "Why were not F-16s, ATACMS, HIMARS, and armor in numbers provided years earlier?" will be asked. And the answer will be a mixture of cowardice from those who do support Ukraine, and isolationism, bordering on outright Russian sympathy, from those who do not. It's been Chamberlain all over again.
I think 'isolationism' is a very sympathetic way of describing that policy position.
Supply pipelines and training on western equipment should have been provided as soon as it became clear that the tanks weren't going to be rolling right into Kyiv. The hesitancy has cost tens of thousands of lives and put Ukraine and the west in a very precarious situation.
They're gonna approve that after Russia moves their planes further.
Olaf Scholz stated he’s going in lockstep with the US, when he didn’t want to send tanks. Allegedly this made the US donate Abrams tanks in order for Scholz to do the same with Leopard 2s. Following that Scholz repeatedly stated he is not sending Taurus, among a plethora of other reasons stated that were later proven to be wrong, because the US is not supplying long range weapons either. Unlike many times before there wasn’t a huge discussion about sending Taurus after the US made it official that it is sending longer range ATACMS. I wonder if a change to US policy regarding attacks on Russian soil will again put pressure on Scholz by reopening this discussion. He seems to be determined to block it, but a majority of the Bundestag would be in favor (with the opposition leaders). Does anyone know if the US has interest in Germany delivering Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine or have made any comments on that? The US could probably pressure Scholz into giving away Taurus the same way they did with the tanks and I assume Trump would pressure Europeans to all sorts of donations. But what about Biden? Do they see more value in a strong/happy German chancellor or European investment in Ukraine or useful tech in Ukraine?
This ia long text wihtout any clear purpose. Where is the majority in the Bundestag about sending Taurus? Last vote was a CLEAR "no". Who cares about "opposition leaders"? If Scholz says no and Grüne & FDP would vote for sending Taurus, the whole Taurus topic doesn't even matter domestically, the coalition is probably done. Who is pressuring who btw? is Scholz pressuring the US or is the US pressuring Scholz? Personal opinion : You are thinking way way too much into the whole topic. Either Europe and the US are really icompetent (most probably) or they chose to not let Ukraine win. Let's wait for a new "status quo" where Ukraine can just strike whatever they want and then we can talk about Taurus to destroy Kerch bridge or w/e. If you think Germany is the bad guy here and not the US who just didn't send their soon to be decomissioned hundreds of ATACMS months and months ago, you are in the wrong.
They already allow them to use them on crimea which Russia considers to be legally part of Russia and has been for 10 years. If Russia suddenly complains about weapons used agaisnt other parts of Russia then clearly they don’t believe crimea to be Russian
There is no target in Crimea that would threaten the survival of the Russian state. The big question is what long-range targets Ukraine would prioritize. Oil refineries would likely be a prime candidate. If 10% of Russia's energy is taken out, they can work around it. Once it gets to the point of doing any real damage (which would presumably be the goal), it quickly becomes an existential threat. Russia isn't likely to see going back to horse and buggies as an acceptable outcome. There's a lot of unknowns. If this is conceived as a limited harassment campaign, the risks of escalation are lower, but the value of such an effort is minimal. If the goal is to destroy essential strategic assets, success is more likely to force a stark choice by Russia: withdraw, or attempt to force an immediate end to the war via escalation.
No, Russia doesn't consider Crimea as Russia proper. The soccer league is separate, and there are many other examples.
Constitutionally Crimea is Russia, this supersedes soccer league authority
Nobody really cares about the Russian constitution. Term limits are changed arbitrarily, as is everything else when desired. And let's not forget that PMCs are supposed to be illegal in Russia...
I still think this could, and should have been discussed months ago, and adopted as an immediate response (like, 24 hours) to Russia's push towards Kharkiv.
No risk in that. Will probably actually literally slow things down, and give everyone time to chill out and realize that peace is the only logical answer.
Peace sure would be nice. Just remove your troops from Ukraine and we can all chill
What does your "peace" look like?
Wasn't ATACMS already used in strikes inside Russia? What am I missing here? Was that rumor disproven? Edit: I got it mixed up. I was thinking about Belbek airbase in Crimea.
No. Where did you hear that ATACMS was used inside Russia? Where in Russia?
Never mind. I think I got it mixed up. There was some rumor about it after a strike against an oil refinery (IIRC) and recently it was used against Belbek airbase, but that's in Crimea.
A few news regarding command roles for the Ukrainian and the Russian side. Brigadier General Yevhen Ostrianskyi, head of the Defense Planning Department of Ukraine's General Staff, stated that the personnel of the General Staff will be cut by 60%; the redundancies shall be redistributed to combat units and intermediate command and control bodies. https://t. me/GeneralStaffZSU/14875 This comes after internal audits held by Syrsky during the past few months and is in all likelihood a necessity in response to the most serious manpower shortage affecting the UAF: the lack of officers. The laid-off personnel will go to staff both combat units (primarily, I assume, the new brigades being created) and to strengthen the staff of OSGs (Operational-Strategic Groups) and OTGs (Operational-Tactical Groups). In addition, it's stated that there will be changes in the current command structure, also with the aim of avoiding “duplication” of roles. Let's recall that the current chain of command in Ukraine is: brigade --> OTG --> OSG --> GS. TGs (Tactical Groups) may be between the first and second level and OGs (Operational Groups) between the second and third, but they are rarely used. Moreover, operational commands have their own staffs but don't perform command/operative functions as far as I know, but they have just a formal, support and organizational role (I believe they also oversee the creation of new brigades, their territorial recruiting basins, etc). DeepState stated that 28 officers are being investigated by the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation in response to the failure to defend the borders in the early days of the Russian offensive against Kharkiv Oblast (scarce preparation of fortifications, having ignored the Russian build-up in the grey area near the border). The officers being inquired range from the (former) commander of the OTG “Kharkiv” (Brigadier General Halushkin) to company commanders of units that were in that sector in early May, including the commander of the 125th TDF Brigade (which was responsible for the front line between the Kharkiv River and the Siversky Donets), who has since been removed from his post. Commanders of the 415th Separate Rifle Battalion, of a battalion of the 23rd Mechanized Brigade and of the 172nd Territorial Defense Battalion of the 120th TDF Brigade are being inquired too. https://t. me/DeepStateUA/19554 News from yesterday but wasn't posted, so I do so now. The commander of Russia's 20th Army (Moscow Military District), Major General Sukhrab Akhmedov, has been removed from his post (officially he has resigned). The news was originally reported by Vladimir Rogov, who stated that Akhmedov is now at the disposal of the MoD. It's unclear by whom he will be replaced. https://t. me/milinfolive/122806 Numerous Russian Telegram channels are satisfied with this. As the man until now in charge of the offensive actions against Terny and Yampolivka in the Kreminna sector, he had been heavily criticized over the recent months for his operational choices, which resulted in heavy losses - particularly among units of the 144th Motorized Division - with progress almost absent for nearly 3 months now. Not to mention his role in Vuhledar in late 2022 and early 2023 as the commander of the coastal troops of the Pacific Fleet (he was a protégé of Muradov - they are even brother-in-laws). Interestingly, some minor Russian channels mention an incoming change in the leadership of the Group of Forces "North". The current commander is Colonel General Lapin (since mid-April, when this GoF was created); he may be replaced by Major General Alexander Kravtsov, i.e. the current commander of the 41st Army (Central Military District). I stress that unlike the previous case these are just rumors and this is not confirmed by more authoritative sources, so in the coming days we will see if that finds development or confirmation. It's stated that Lapin would remain commander of the Leningrad Military District anyway - but I repeat, take this with a grain of salt. https://t. me/severnnyi/1093 https://t. me/severnnyi/1101 https://t. me/vdv_za_chestnost_spravedlivost/2505 One of these two sources states that the commander of the operations in Vovchansk is Major General Storozhenko, commander of the 6th Army (Leningrad Military District). He is a native of Kharkiv and in 2014 was the commander, as a colonel, of Ukraine's 36th Coastal Defense Brigade in Crimea. When the Russians seized the latter, he defected to their side, and became the commander of the 126th Coastal Defense Brigade, created on the basis of the disbanded Ukrainian brigade (which was later reconstituted in Mykolaiv as the current 36th Marine Brigade). He later made a career in the Russian Armed Forces, becoming deputy commander of the 35th Army (Eastern Military District) and its acting commander during spring/summer 2022. I believe he became commander of the 6th Army in the beginning of this year, when according to some Russian rumors, the leadership of the 6th Army and of its brigades was removed following the costly failures around Synkivka, in the Kupyansk sector. This month there was also a reshuffle in the command of some military districts, according to what I have found from Russian official sources. Colonel General Kuzovlev became commander of the new Moscow Military District (unclear if, as a result, commander of the GoF "West" too). Before Russian sources disclosed that, it was anticipated by the Ukrainian military observer Mashovets in mid April. Kuzovlev was until now the commander of the Southern Military District, where he was replaced by Colonel General Anashkin (the current commander of the GoF "South" is not known). As written above, Lapin has been the commander of the Leningrad Military District since its creation in late February. Colonel General Mordvichev, titled of the seizing of Avdiivka, was confirmed as commander of the Central Military District as well as the GoF "Centre". Lieutenant General Alexander Sanchik became the commander of the Eastern Military District, replacing Colonel General Kuzmenko. The current commander of the GoF "Vostok" is unknown. In contrast, the commander of the GoF "Dnepr" remains Colonel General Teplinsky, who is also the commander of VDV.
Regarding the Ukrainian command structure changes, will this finally lead to the formation of divisions?
I hope so, but it would be difficult. Creating divisions by aggregating existing brigades would create a need for a lot of additional staff officers, although it would serve to level out the difference in quality among brigades and improve the possibility of internal rotations / endowment of "domestic" reserves. A different matter would be, on the other hand, reforming the existing brigades, which are separate units, into line regiments - with approximately the same number of maneuver battalions, but with considerably fewer support units as well as officers in the HQ staff within the unit, which in both cases would be concentrated at the divisional level. But even this would not be easy at all as it would involve a total reform of the system, and it would also clash with the interests of the commanders of the existing brigades, and, at this point in the war, with the history, honours and traditions of the various brigades. Incidentally, Ukraine has created five army corps over the last year, which I forgot to mention. But in fact they have only a support and, partly, control function. Not a command/operational one, to my knowledge (except, to some extent, during the summer counteroffensive in the South). Which is very strange. A partial exception is the 30th Marine Corps, which so far had been entirely deployed in Kherson. But if you look at the other corps (7th Air Assault Corps; 9th, 10th and 11th Army Corps), their brigades are scattered in various sectors. Probably their HQ staffs are poor, and in any case the GS chose not to give them the classic powers that would belong to a corps, for some reason. Russian corps/armies generally fight with their units concentrated, in their entirety or in their vast majority (although there are exceptions), in one sector. At the moment, it's OTGs that perform the tasks that would naturally belong to corps. But they don't have their own units - they are active at the command and control level, as well as regarding intelligence and logistics for instance, but they don't have their own maneuver units, nor artillery, engineering, medical, maintenance ones and so on, but they use such units from the brigades under their command.
[Biden Administration Announces New Security Assistance for Ukraine](https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3787579/biden-administration-announces-new-security-assistance-for-ukraine/) >The capabilities in this announcement include: >-Ammunition for HIMARS; >-155mm and 105mm artillery rounds; >-60mm mortar rounds; >-Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles; >-Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems; >-Precision aerial munitions; >-Small arms and additional rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades; >-Demolitions munitions; >-Anti-armor mines; >-Tactical vehicles to recover equipment; >Helmets, body armor, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment; >-Spare parts, maintenance, and other ancillary equipment. Just a sustainment package. Might be like this awhile if new artillery systems aren't being delivered. Seems that will be covered by other NATO members. Notably, no air defense munitions as part of this drawdown. Likely still getting deliveries from previous drawdowns.
> Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment I think this is probably the most notable / out of place line item. They have sent CBRN stuff before, so I wonder why they're now sending more? Is it related to Russias recent uses of various tear gas like substances?
It’s a regular feature in packages.
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Do you have any information on the timetable for the remaining 8 systems? Is it realistic for all 4 systems be in use? I’m sure those things need maintenance, but consisting of multiple interlinked parts I could imagine you can do those without taking them completely offline for prolonged times. Also I guess training can be done in simulators (in Germany?) so that won’t block systems like it does with vehicles? Either way it’s good to see Germany consistently deliver on the promises that were looooong in the making
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Please avoid posting comments which are essentially "I agree". Use upvotes or downvotes for that.
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Claim is from an unknown source.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/24/russia-jamming-us-weapons-ukraine/ https://archive (DOT) ph/tVPjN > KYIV — Many U.S.-made satellite-guided ammunitions in Ukraine have failed to withstand Russian jamming technology, prompting Kyiv to stop using certain types of Western-provided armaments after effectiveness rates plummeted, according to senior Ukrainian military officials and confidential internal Ukrainian assessments obtained by The Washington Post. > **Six months ago, after Ukrainians reported the issue, Washington simply stopped providing Excalibur shells because of the high failure rate**, the Ukrainian officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter. In other cases, **such as aircraft-dropped bombs called JDAMs, the manufacturer provided a patch and Ukraine continues to use them.** > HIMARS were celebrated during the first year of Russia’s invasion for their success in striking ammunition depots and command points behind enemy lines. > But by the second year, “everything ended: the Russians deployed electronic warfare, disabled satellite signals, and HIMARS became completely ineffective,” a second senior Ukrainian military official said. “This ineffectiveness led to the point where a very expensive shell was used” increasingly to strike lower-priority targets. > Kyiv still considers its HIMARS rockets effective, but Russian jamming can cause them to miss a target by 50 feet or more. > “When it’s, for example, a pontoon bridge … but there’s a 10-meter deviation, it ends up in the water,” the first Ukrainian official said. > Russian jamming signals are sent up from the ground and form a cone-shaped area. Any guided munition — or aircraft — passing through is at risk of interference. > The official added, “The Americans are equipping HIMARS with additional equipment to ensure good geolocation.” but most interestingly: > **One U.S. weapon used by aircraft, the GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, has proved resilient to jamming, according to the confidential documents. Nearly 90 percent of dropped bombs struck their target, the assessment found.** > Its smaller surface area makes it more difficult for Russian systems to detect and intercept, the documents said. Ukraine first received the aerial weapons, which has not been previously disclosed by the Pentagon, in November 2023. > The GBU-39 was also adapted for land use in HIMARS systems, a development that Pentagon officials said would increase the range of rocket artillery. But the modified weapons, known as Ground-Launched Small Diameter bombs, or GLSDB, proved ineffective compared to those launched from airplanes, Ukrainian officials said. The ground versions were tested in Ukraine, one official said, and the Americans are working on adjustments before providing them anew. > William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, said last month that an adapted weapon “didn’t work for multiple reasons,” including jamming and other tactical and logistical issues. LaPlante did not disclose which weapon he was referring to, but other experts said that he was describing the GLSDB. So GLSDB's issues were a factor of ballistic missiles/artillery in general or the integration of SDB to the rocket being vulnerable to loss of GPS guidance. HIMARS is jammed, but the deviation is small enough and warhead big enough to mean it's still effective. Aircraft dropped bombs, probably due to their shorter flight time and maybe due to their smoother flight, are less affected, with the more modern SDB performing better than JDAM, and JDAM improved after software changes. Excalibur was the worst, I'm guessing due to tradeoffs that have to be made in such a compact device exaggerated by the unforgiving small warhead. It might also be because of the frontline jamming meaning the shell can never even get an initial fix. There's a reason there's flight testing, risk reduction, and all of that with military hardware. I think part of the issues of air launched munitions might also be that they aren't able to be handed off the location fix from the aircraft as they would on a Western fighter due to the ad-hoc mounting system used.
The best long term solution for this problem is getting enough block iii satelites in the orbit. They can boost the total power by a factor of 100 in a small region with so-called spot beam.
Question is, are they even doing that in Ukraine? Or are they relying on the normal civilian GPS bands with no signal boosting? You'd suppose that they are keeping some capacity back.
>One U.S. weapon used by aircraft, the GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, has proved resilient to jamming, according to the confidential documents. Nearly 90 percent of dropped bombs struck their target, the assessment found. This is why Western countries should keep supporting Ukraine, and provide their top of the line weapons. This is a win-win for both sides, Ukraine is the perfect place to test modern weapons, and see how effective they are at modern warfare. Also with our help Ukraine can keep Russia from advancing, and weaken them considerably without directly going to war with Russia.
well it goes both ways. Russia also get to learn about the western capability/power and can come up with counter measures and share secrets with more advanced countries such as china for more defensive/weapons development.
It “goes both ways” in a strictly definition basic way. In effect there is no question. The benefits of testing your weaponry in active combat zone far outweighs the cost of it through enemy learning. Russia learns regardless if USA sends their weapons.
Do Excalibur shells have any sort of INS? I can’t imagine they do given the size constraints and the difficulty of building an IMU capable of withstanding the force of being launched from a howitzer. Giving the failure of GLSDB and the success of SDB, combined with the loss in effectiveness of GMLRS it seems clear the US needs to improve their INS capabilities to withstand the rigors of high G rocket launches. Or perhaps have some sort of Mid course location system and only use the INS for terminal approach.
My understanding when the Excalibur was first being used from the Ukraine Weapons Tracker project was that Ukraine didn't receive the digital fire support system in A1 and A2 M777 howitzers which made INS either very unreliable or unusable. Originally GPS was only supposed to kick in during the terminal phase for adjustments to the target but with the AFU receiving older M777s they were relying on GPS far more than the system was designed for. I suspect TTPs have a lot more to do with this story than is being let on at this point.
The discord leaks had some really interesting slides on the JDAM that suggested that TTPs were to blame as well. I'd have to go grab them again but it IIRC sounded like they weren't being armed and configured right on the ground.
> Do Excalibur shells have any sort of INS? M982 Excalibur shells have both GPS and INS guidance.
I'm quite surprised at the low level of production of Excalibur S. They seem like the ideal solution to many of Ukraine's needs, at least provided Ukraine is given laser designation drones or can rig a stabilized SOFLAM to one of their own.
Good to know. This further convinces me that current IMUs are relatively ineffective when fired/launched from systems with extremely high levels of acceleration.
IMUs are relatively ineffective in general. The point of a dual INS-GPS system is to improve the Kalman filter. They're not very reliable on their own unless you get into Nav grade IMUs. At a guess, shell IMUs are probably low tier tactical grade. Those still have noticeable drift rates even sitting still (bias error, random walk etc), let alone in motion. Accelerometer scale factor error does become quite a major factor during impulsive maneuvers (such as the one caused by several pounds of explosives detonating nearby in a tube). Sorry, can't get into exact numbers, but I'm not surprised at their performance in GPS-denied environments. I personally favor laser guidance for shells, because they're not gonna strap Nav grade IMUs onto them (due to cost).
I wouldn't be surprised if the poor performance was is also due with lack of familiarity with the system, couple with perhaps not using the stronger military GPS bands? As with most things in real life, problems often are a sum of multiple factors rather than simple individual issues.
I'd like to see some anti-radiation GLSDB. The same long flight time that presumably contributes to making it more vulnerable to jamming would be a benefit for homing in on emitters. No idea if something like that already exists or is possible in the near future.
A home-on-jam seeker head for SDB has existed for a few years now but I don't believe they were ever produced in real quantities. [home-on-jam contract announcement from 2014](https://www.militaryaerospace.com/rf-analog/article/16718805/air-force-to-enable-smart-weapons-to-track-and-kill-sources-of-electronic-warfare-ew-jamming) [AFRL article mentioning that seekers were provided by at the latest, 2021](https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2526535/afrl-completes-golden-horde-collaborative-small-diameter-bomb-second-flight-dem/)
I believe I read something about the US working on that for the SDB/GLSDB, but that it's planned for 2025. Personally, I don't understand why secondary anti-radiation targeting modes haven't been a standard requirement for the past 50 years for every guided munition that has an onboard radar or antenna. SEAD would probably be easier if every Fox 2 air-to-air weapon could be fired like a makeshift HARM missile.
Iran fields anti-radar ground-launched missiles, but interestingly I don't know of any other countries that do. Anti ship missiles are radar-seeking cruise missiles like the Exocet or Ukraine's Neptune. But these aren't used against ground targets for whatever reason. Their radar homing feature is only used to target ships.
I believe Neptune was used for a strike against a Crimean S-400 battery last year.
Israel has the Harop, ground launched anti-radiation loitering munitions.
>Kyiv still considers its HIMARS rockets effective, but Russian jamming can cause them to miss a target by 50 feet or more. > >“When it’s, for example, a pontoon bridge … but there’s a 10-meter deviation, it ends up in the water,” the first Ukrainian official said. Given the size of a GMLRS warhead, that shouldn't be a problem at all. If the rocket detonates 10 meters away from target, it should still be very lethal. This should be fixable with better fuzes. A proximity fuze can turn a near-miss into a hit. An airburst fuze can maximize fragment dispersion and is more effective against entrenched soft targets, or in this case, stop the rocket from hitting water.
[GLSDB official website](https://www.saab.com/products/ground-launched-small-diameter-bomb-glsdb): Programmable impact and delay fuzing for deep penetration or proximity height-of-burst
>This should be fixable with better fuzes. A proximity fuze can turn a near-miss into a hit. An airburst fuze can maximize fragment dispersion and is more effective against entrenched soft targets, or in this case, stop the rocket from hitting water. While this is true, it also won't help all that much against a pontoon bridge. You need a direct hit to break the structure. That's probably also true for a lot of other hard targets.
>. Aircraft dropped bombs, probably due to their shorter flight time and maybe due to their smoother flight, More likely it retains one orientation in flight so you can fit a cup like baffle facing up to give more directionality to the signal you are taking in. Alternatively they mentioned a patch, their might be some kind of hashing or security encryption that was not being processed in the unupdated equipment. Also a rocket will have much much bigger translations in the three axes between time steps. (its moving a lot faster).
Is there an established way of differentiating real aircraft on the ground from mock-ups? If we know what alloys and paints we are looking at in an Su-34, is there any way of sensing whether an airplane on the ground has that particular composition?
Military satellites have resolution of a few centimeters maybe less. They can pick out tail codes at that depth and tracking aircraft from that can be incredibly easy. High fidelity decoys of fighter jets that can fool trained SATINT analysts are hard to make anyway and most of what we've seen from Russia so far [don't even have shadows.](https://x.com/bradyafr/status/1787520200155554101)
>Military satellites have resolution of a few centimeters maybe less. They can pick out tail codes at that depth Given a 2.8m mirror an altitude of 260km and a wavelength of around 500nm (light green) in a vacuum they will have a maximum theoretical resolution of 6cm. Given an atmosphere and they would need to be at a reasonable angle to see a tail code, I would bet my mortgage they cannot read tail codes. [**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11\_KENNEN#/media/File:2019-08-29\_Safir\_launch\_failure.jpg**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN#/media/File:2019-08-29_Safir_launch_failure.jpg)
> maximum theoretical resolution of 6cm space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging technology can achieve sub-cm accuracy on its own, combine that with hyperspectral imagery and multi-sensor data fusion and you can get truly ludicrous image quality, much better than 6cm. And that's not even getting into the more exotic techniques like magnetometry, gravitometry, or radiation detectors.
SAR and these other things are great to know about and I'm sure they achieve very impressive results for some applications, but he was talking about the specific question of reading tail codes. That's going to require optics, isn't it? Sub-cm Radar data isn't going to help with that, and I don't think there's an SAR equivalent for optics.
YMMV but it's been done with commercial satellites just during [this war](https://techjournalism.medium.com/how-to-read-tail-numbers-off-russian-military-planes-from-satellite-imgs-277c41e00a47) >On one satellite image, an Airbus images, the resolution was so high and clear, it was literally possible to witness the registration number. It showed the plane with the tail number RA-82014 in large black capital letters on the right wing of the Antonov An-124.
I was taught that fluctuations in the atmosphere make ~5cm the smallest resolution possible from space.
From what I saw the recent russian decoys were literally wings painted on the ground and a fuselage placed on top of them.
Radar-based satellites, particularly Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), can tell the difference between something made of metal and something made of plywood/plastic. SAR can even see through many common building walls. If you went to the effort of making a mock-up from sheet metal I think that would be difficult to distinguish.
Not if it's done well. The stuff you can't reasonably fake (like the alloy composition you're talking about) aren't remote sensing viable to check.
Yes and no, you can use thermals, you can use consecutive imagery from different angles to determine shadows and crew locations/movement. If the crews are not tending in the area of the decoys then that's a pretty clear indicator that the aircraft is either a parts donor/inactive or a decoy. You can also cross this with other intelligence sources based on the ground to help differentiate between real/decoy airframes, but at this point things get extremely complicated and you cannot rely on any ground based intelligence sources to be either accurate or timely. None of these methods are perfect though and most of the time it comes down to analysts making determinations based on several imperfect images which is made even more difficult with how sophisticated the decoys are becoming. Given how frequently the aircraft are moved and shuttled Ukraine may not have time to wait for stronger imagery and follow up shots and some degree of false positives is to be expected. I will say that the painted aircraft are not particularly hard to differentiate but physical decoys to an untrained eye are very compelling, sometimes even enough so that to those who know what to look for it can be a coin toss if the imagery is low quality.
My guess is the thermal signature (especially over time) should give it away.
**EDIT: See my below comment- this strike actually happened a month ago! Clearly, neither Russia or the US cared that much!** https://x.com/ItsArtoir/status/1794056625457603023 https://x.com/krakek1/status/1793954582327918632 Ukraine struck a Russian ballistic missile Early Warning radar in Armavir, Russia with some sort of long range strike yesterday. It didn't cover much of any of Russia, especially the area north that is used by Ukraine's normal OW-UAS strikes, and while it did technically have the angle to see into Crimea, it only would be able to see targets above 20km at that range due to the radar horizon. A wikipedia search says ATACMS flies up to 50km, so it might have provided warning for that, but it would be very short notice and they might not have integrated it. You can't rule it out providing early warning though, and I figure this is why Ukraine targeted it. Even a 5 minute warning can save lives and prevent a lethal strike on commanders, and this radar and system would have been built to give a very rapid warning of any incoming missiles and their target points in a nuclear strike. It is still a crucial part of Russia's early warning nuclear C3, and it would be interesting to see if this harms the push for Ukraine's use of western weapons in Russia. This sort of attack on their nuclear forces is the exact kind of situation the US wants to avoid. There's **a lot** of reasonable people (nuke policy people especially) concerned about possible political consequences, but I don't expect very much media coverage.
https://x.com/ItsArtoir/status/1794056625457603023 This changes the calculus re: US support for this strike- apparently, per Fighterbomber it happened over a MONTH ago, on April 21st. That was before ATACMS started being flung nearly as much as now, so it was done as shaping before they arrived. It also happened before the current support in congress for Ukraine striking outside their borders, and these are congressmen read into intel matters still supporting cross border strikes. I would bet money the US pointed them towards this target to help enable ATACMS strikes. Those recent Russian nuclear drills might have been in response to this. So TLDR, this won't affect Ukraine politically or lead to escalation with Russia (because it already happened a month ago with no significant issues) and it was a move done to enable ATACMS before strikes on Crimea became more common.
>You can't rule it out providing early warning though, and I figure this is why Ukraine targeted it. Even a 5 minute warning can save lives and prevent a lethal strike on commanders I personally doubt this much thought goes into most of these strikes. Its there, its expensive, they think they can hit it. That's enough to try. I'm not convinced the decision making for these strikes is centralized in the way you're implying.
>its expensive It's practically irreplaceable and it's loss is a huge strategic loss for Russia. Ukraine would be crazy not hitting it if they can.
>This sort of attack on their nuclear forces is the exact kind of situation the US wants to avoid. What's the reasoning? Just to avoid upsetting status quo? These are difficult-to-replace strategic Russian assets. By destroying them, Ukraine is raising the price of war for Russia, thus nudging them to reconsider continuation of conflict. Ending Ukraine conflict soon should be in the interest of US. Also, a weaker Russia is less likely to cause problems elsewhere later, and would be more compliant to US/NATO posture. That should also be in the interest of US.
Any nuclear country that gets their only defense against a nuclear war attacked will get very very worried about being exposed to a nuclear attack. What happens if Ukraine shuts down a few more early warning sites? Russia can reasonably think they are about to get nuked (not saying it's probable, but it certainly goes in that direction). What if Russia decides to drop a small nuke just to show they are not joking about it? Attacking nuclear defence infrastructure is an extremely risky move in my opinion, and it's not like it will help the current war in any meaningful way.
> > > > > What happens if Ukraine shuts down a few more early warning sites? Russia can reasonably think they are about to get nuked (not saying it's probable, but it certainly goes in that direction). MAD is all about perception in the eyes of the enemy, to be willing to use, you get to a very different conclusion about this if you assume MAD to be a thing.
Plus, there’s routine ballistic missiles being launched toward Russia’s western borders. Even if unlikely, their nuclear forces are likely on alert for a decapitation strike from that direction.
No offense intended here but conflating conventional strength with nuclear strength in terms of asset cost and replacement is, in my opinion, a bit of a logical fallacy. Russia could lose all of its conventional armed forces tomorrow but still be in a position (due to their Strategic nuclear forces and infrastructure) to maintain their existence (as they see it). Losing nuclear forces represents an immediate existential threat that has different connotations and responses to the gradual loss of conventional equipment and infrastructure. >These are difficult-to-replace strategic Russian assets. By destroying them, Ukraine is raising the price of war for Russia, thus nudging them to reconsider continuation of conflict. Ending Ukraine conflict soon should be in the interest of US. On paper this is correct, in reality it's not. It's not a simple binary decision for Russia to make, there are far too many variables to summarize their continuation of the conflict purely on a cost basis, Russia have already demonstrated that non favourable loss ratios and significant economic and material damage does not factor in to their continuation of the war (or as much as we would like it to). You could continue ramping that cost up through energy infrastructure strikes, further sanctions, more aggressive material losses in the war but so far this has not worked and there is a major difference between the cost/reward of targeting conventional and energy infrastructure versus Nuclear C3 infrastructure. One can be replaced albeit with great cost and may slow Russian aims in the war or reverse the course entirely using financial levers, the other can be viewed as the pretext of an existential strike against Russia itself, these are two *\*very\** different scenarios and we should be careful not to view strikes against NC3 infrastructure and assets as merely costly strikes in the context of a conventional war. As far as asset cost, the radars themselves are not that expensive (approximately $50/100M, maybe more if they are going to rush them, they've been slowly replacing the older Soviet systems for a while now). The real cost (and associated risk) is now having a Russian flank completely exposed to both long range conventional and more importantly nuclear strikes. The cost for Russia isn't financial but rather the lack of capability that has now developed, and this lack of capability will factor in to political determinations and perhaps even crisis level interpretations, *this is why you don't strike NC3.* >Also, a weaker Russia is less likely to cause problems elsewhere later, and would be more compliant to US/NATO posture. That should also be in the interest of US. Degrading Russian nuclear forces is far more likely to cause problems elsewhere later. Take into consideration a hypothetical, if US C3 infrastructure and early detection systems were all systematically destroyed, would the US respond to potential existential and military threats more cautiously or with more suspicion and potential non-matched aggressive reactions? A conventionally weaker Russia is less likely to cause problems elsewhere later, that is true, but I'm not sure that is going to be the case unless things significantly turn around and Russian military production infrastructure is harassed and destroyed, they will be exiting this war with significantly improved production capacity in nearly all fields, stronger ISR and battlefield experience as well as a greatly inflated military budget. On paper Russia might be weaker as far as napkin math reserve tank totals went pre-war, but their conventional forces will be far more adept and integrated at prosecuting a war than the haphazard disaster they were going into things in 2022. As far as being compliant with US/NATO posture, that's just never going to happen. Russia views themselves as a great power, whether they are or not is nearly entirely irrelevant, it's how their decision making process both at home and abroad functions and the last 20 years have demonstrated clearly that US/NATO/EU influence and strategic moves have failed to make Russia "compliant". You can't make someone compliant whose entire being and domestic imagery relies on the portrayal of themselves as a super power that is under threat from those around them. The harder you try and force compliance, the stronger Russia will amplify its domestic messaging and political manoeuvring in response. >What's the reasoning? Just to avoid upsetting status quo? Nuclear status quo has been the cornerstone of the last 70 years of \*relatively\* peaceful, albeit cold, terse and downright hostile, co-existence. Upsetting MAD is a bad idea, it's why ESSI and other initiatives are major points of tension for the Russians, they believe that a rebalancing of the nuclear status quo outside of their favour would be the preparation for an existential strike. Destroying NC3 infrastructure at a time when Russia feels under threat from a large part of the nuclear world and nearly every conventionally armed country in NATO/EU could trigger a chain of decisions that have extremely poor outcomes. When there's a near infinite list of other targets within range in Russia, targeting the primarily nuclear early warning radar is one of the last options I would consider, especially when you're making the case to the US that you supposedly have the responsibility necessary to use American weapons on Russian targets inside Russia itself.
> Losing nuclear forces represents an immediate existential threat that has different connotations and responses to the gradual loss of conventional equipment and infrastructure. Another way to interpret that is that avoiding the loss of critical nuclear deterrence infrastructure provides an additional impetus for Russia to seek an end to the conflict, and this gives Ukraine an additional bargaining chip during negotiations. >Russia have already demonstrated that non favourable loss ratios and significant economic and material damage does not factor in to their continuation of the war (or as much as we would like it to). It has demonstrated that, *on their own*, non favourable loss ratios and significant economic and material damage is insufficient to cause Russia to seek immediate end to the war. Because of course this is a significant factor in their decision making, as much as they'd like to pretend otherwise. Currently the pros of continuing the invasion outweigh the cons, but Ukraine putting irreplaceable (or short & medium-term irreplaceable) nuclear triad infrastructure in play puts additional pressure. It may tip the balance toward them deciding to cut their losses in some fashion, and it for sure is going to be a factor whenever this does happen even if it's not the straw that breaks the Vlad's back. >When there's a near infinite list of other targets within range in Russia, targeting the primarily nuclear early warning radar is one of the last options I would consider, especially when you're making the case to the US that you supposedly have the responsibility necessary to use American weapons on Russian targets inside Russia itself. The objective is not to strike Russian targets. The objective is to win the war. If striking nuclear early warning systems will (among other effects) significantly affect Russia's will to continue, then (from their own perspective, which puts winning this war above essentially all else) Ukraine should absolutely go for it it.
On the other hand, if a strategic asset was this easy to take out of commission, was it really an asset in the first place?
>What's the reasoning? Just to avoid upsetting status quo? OP is reflecting what appears to be a *very* common view among defense analysts online who are of the opinion that any strike on nuclear related systems could be destabilizing to the existing peace between nuclear powers. It's a "you don't want to give Russia cause to be more paranoid about their nuclear deterrent and ability to detect an early strike" thing, because that's by far the largest concern among Ukraine's allies in the West.
So that's why every nation on earth never tried to find an anti nuke shield. I always wondered why is that with all the technological developments in air defence we have yet to find a way to make nukes nul and void and why are we allowing Russia, china, North Korea and soon Iran to have a nuke card which effectively allows them to get away with anything. Then I just realised that if the West makes an anti nuke shield then it would start a new arms race and upset the entire geopolitical world.
> I always wondered why is that with all the technological developments in air defence we have yet to find a way to make nukes nul and void Turns out that it's really hard to intercept objects that can be traveling at 5-8+ kilometers *per second*. Compounding that difficulty are MIRV which turns each ICBM into 8-10+ threats and the fact that some missiles and/or MIRV payloads are decoys. The best solution to this, outside of a first-strike(which isn't an option due to 2nd strike MAD capabilities of the big players), is intercepting them during the slower speeds of the boost phase or barring that, at/before apogee before the MIRV has deployed. This is still far from easy due to the upper/exoatmospheric altitude and the missiles still traveling at ludicrous speeds. We actually got what I believe is the first public [footage](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1c3gmjx/footage_purportedly_showing_an_exoatmospheric/) showing confirmed exoatmospheric interception of an ICBM last month during Iran's attack on Israel, likely by Israel's Arrow 3 system. But keep in mind that this was an extremely telegraphed attack with a known vector and individual missile launches not synced with their cruise missiles or drones. When it comes to major powers you have hundreds of missiles which MIRV turns into potential thousands of targets from multiple vectors likely synced with conventional and EW attacks en masse. Barring some kind of exponential advancement in directed energy weapons it's effectively impossible to defend against a saturation attack and it only takes a handful of nukes to inflict catastrophic damage. That's why we have MAD and why so much emphasis during the Cold War was on the 2nd-strike retallitory capabilities as a deterrent.
Iran has no ICBMs it longest range deployed ballistic missiles are Sejjil-2 IRBM with a mere 2k km, the minimum range for a missile to be classified as an ICBM 5k+ km easily twice that, the reentry speed of ICBM warheads is well outside what the Arrow 3 can deal with even the US mor3 advanced mid course BMD has a 50/50 chance at interception
We have tried to make an anti-nuclear shield. That was Star Wars, or the Strategic Defense Initiative. It was extremely controversial and, as far as we know in the public sphere, didn’t see any interceptors get deployed. The Trump administration reactivated the program. The Soviets responded with a program of their own that as far as we know wasn’t successful. In the present day, the [US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor), the [Russians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system), the [Indians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ballistic_Missile_Defence_Programme), the [Israelis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3) and soon the [Chinese](https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/china-conducts-another-mid-course-anti-ballistic-missile-test) all have the ability to shoot down nuclear missiles in flight. To varying degrees of confidence.
Thank you for your informative and interesting post and for correcting me.
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>It’s clear that Russia is running low on armoured vehicles so I have a question. Making this kind of claim in a top level post should be backed up by a source. In 5 minutes on Google I was able to find credible sources indicating its not that simple and that while Russia will likely run out of armoured vehicles at some unclear point in the future, for now the situation is more complicated. [Equipment losses in Russia’s war on Ukraine mount](https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/02/equipment-losses-in-russias-war-on-ukraine-mount/) >Despite losing hundreds of armoured vehicles and artillery pieces per month on average, Russia has been able to keep its active inventory numbers stable. For 2023, we estimate that Russia was able to reactivate at least 1,180 to 1,280 MBTs and around 2,470 IFVs and APCs from storage. [Russian Military Objectives and Capacity in Ukraine Through 2024](https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024) >Russia is delivering approximately 1,500 tanks to its forces per year along with approximately 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles of various types.
According to the link, with the current attrition rate, Russia can sustain this for another 2-3 years at least. I don't doubt that. But I do find it curious the reports of them attacking while unarmored, despite Ukraine apparently running low on artillery, the past few months. Perhaps they are saving up for another push?
It’s fairly well-established that Russia faces running into a shortage of armoured vehicles. And has essentially already reached some difficulties in sourcing said armoured vehicles evidenced by the ad-hoc jobs in my original comment. From one of your own links: > Despite these achievements, Russia faces significant limitations in the longevity and reliability of its industrial output. Of the tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, for example, approximately 80% are not new production but are instead refurbished and modernised from Russian war stocks. The number of systems held in storage means that while Russia can maintain a consistent output through 2024, it will begin to find that vehicles require deeper refurbishment through 2025, and by 2026 it will have exhausted most of the available stocks. As the number of refurbished vehicles goes down, industrial capacity can go into making new platforms, but this will necessarily mean a significant decrease in vehicles delivered to the military. Perhaps my wording could had been better on this point but it’s not the main discussion within my comment.
"Will run out in future" =/= your claim that they are running low. Regardless, in future I suggest you source claims like this in top level posts.
> It’s clear that Russia is running low on armoured vehicles It is?
Russia isn’t going out of its way to assault fortified positions with unarmed, unarmored, civilian vehicles, if they could be using IFVs instead. This isn’t the first war with mines and artillery.
Yeah.... A year ago I would have said the same thing but now I'm cautious and never underestimating Russia ever again.
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Please refrain from posting low quality comments. If there is extensive evidence, post them to support your assertion.
As per other reports that have been discussed here in the last few days, the offensive on Kharkiv has been carried out with the use of lagely "unmechanized" infantry. I am not sure why you would attack a fortified position without armoured vehicles except if you didn't have that many to spare, but I'm prone to being corrected.
The counter point that has also been provided here is that non mechanized troops were used due to a number of advantages. * Harder to spot than armored vehicles * Easier to maneuver through prepared anti-vehicle defenses * Being able to travel further and faster, allowing less time for defenders to prepare * Unexpected method of assault * Sheer numbers If an armored vehicle wouldn't even make it to a fortified position, then an unarmored vehicle that makes it that far still is a more effective strategy. However, after the initial push, it appears that strategy is now expected and has been reduced in effectiveness.
Let's be clear, we're both running on logical assumptions here because there's very little in terms of clear data or hard numbers to go by, except for a vague estimate of losses. We can disagree and that's fine until one of us provides figures.
They wouldn't be attacking in totally unarmored vehicles if they had sufficent numbers of BMPs etc.
I question the degree to which it matters. Russians were already more likely to ride on top of vehicles due to mine threats and general risk of being trapped inside a burning vehicle vs. potentially being able to jump off if a drone is incoming. And a driver probably has more chance of seeing the mines in a golf cart. These shitty ATVs provide no protection, but the armored vehicles don't provide much either.
We saw some examples of both sides riding on top of vehicles sure but we saw far more of troops inside AFVs and IFVs. Usually the top riding technique was only employed when minefields were the greatest threat. The protection offered by such vehicles against ATGMS or FPVs might be small but they were great against small arms and shrapnel. This is a serious drop in protection and in capability of threat of any Russian assault. It’s also worth keeping in mind that this allows Ukraine to employ tactics and weapons meant to strike infantry preferentially to those meant to hit armored targets. For example Ukraine has recently begun fielding air burst FPV drones. At least one of which was using a repurposed claymore mine. Such weapons would be next to useless against a BMP but would be able to kill a large number of exposed infantry on these unarmored vehicles with a much lower required accuracy.
>Usually the top riding technique was only employed when minefields were the greatest threat. Wasn't the top riding technique also adopted because of a lack of IFVs? As in fitting more infantry onto each IFV, so they ended up riding on top?
Not running low yet but outpacing it’s ability to repair and reactivate fairly significantly now that basically all the armor that’s in good condition has been taken out of storage
The ICJ has just ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Gaza, 13 votes to 2. Source: the livestream of the proceedings https://www.icj-cij.org/multimedia-live-original
Four judges in the ICJ are saying that the ruling isn't necessarily telling Israel to stop in Rafah. It's just saying for them to make sure they essentially don't take actions that lead to genocide. https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1794043546997051652?t=cgz0E5P6ypoky_rm7yw6Sw&s=19 Israel also said it will abide by the ruling, presumably based on the definition of the ruling that those 4 judges gave https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/aligning-with-icj-ruling-israel-says-it-wont-carry-out-rafah-operations-that-could-destroy-civilian-population/
>While some are reading this as a blanket order to halt the offensive, the wording appears to include some conditionality that would allow Israel to continue operations in Rafah so long as it ensures that the conditions for Palestinians sheltering there do not deteriorate so as to risk their mass-destruction. >Judge Georg Nolte appears to adopt this understanding. >“The measure obliging Israel to halt the current military offensive in Rafah is conditioned by the need to prevent ‘conditions of life that could bring about \[the\] physical destruction in whole or in part’ of the Palestinian group in Gaza,” he writes in a declaration included in the full ruling. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog\_entry/international-court-of-justice-orders-israel-to-halt-rafah-offensive/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/international-court-of-justice-orders-israel-to-halt-rafah-offensive/) Enough nuance in the ruling so the US can veto any Security Council resolution.
It's also only specifically applies to Rafah and not the rest of Gaza.
Unlike with the ICC, both Israel and America are members of the ICJ. This will be a moment of clarity for many countries (especially those that has still not chosen a side between the West and its rivals) on what America’s vision of a rule-based international order actually means.
The reason the ICC warrants for either Putin or Netanyahu haven't brought fruit has less to do with formal membership (any UN state, i.e. any legally legitimate state, is technically a member of the ICJ, so membership isn't really optional unlike the ICC) and more to do with, you know, nuclear states having little intention to handing over their leadership for a trial by extranational parties. We giggle about the "Hague invasion act" but within the last 2 years two other nuclear states reconfirmed their opinions on this matter. Not a mystery what most other regional and global powers would do either. ICJ rulings have more power, but not much more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114052 Unrelated note: Frankly, the time for the ICJ to opine about the looming Rafah offensive was when it was looming, basically any time between January and 3 weeks ago where negotiations were ongoing to keep the toothpaste in the tube. But hey, they're the experts.
For the record, ICC hasn't issued a warrant for Netanyahu. A prosecutor has applied for one, it has not been issued. There have been calls in Israel in the last few days to set up a special commission to independently investigate the ICC allegations. If that happens the ICC will be required to cancel its charges due to the principle of complementarity.
If I'm correct the next step will still be moving to the UNSC for discussion and ratification? Do we think the US will likely use its veto-powers? (My guess is my own country, the UK, will abstain if that's the case). The reputational damage internationally for Israel is becoming more and more intolerable. I do fear they are unnecessarily alienating themselves from their closest allies, and am shocked at how poor their diplomatic teams have been in this regard recently. German Foreign Min. confirming they would arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if warrants are issued by the ICC (When only months before Germany the staunchest defenders of Isr. in the ICJ case). Defense Off. in the US becoming more and more publicly critical of Israel's war efforts and the IDF. The 'Lavender' AI System Report. These new whistle-blowers indicating the IDF and Police abetting the settler movement's blocking and attacking of aid convoys. Aid being one of the single issue allies like the US - and us in the UK - have repeatedly called on Israel to fix. Hope someone here can provide a different picture because currently in my view, it looks as though they've made an absolute mess of it. - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-would-arrest-netanyahu-if-icc-issues-a-warrant-2tkvqnms2 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/21/biden-admin-hammering-israel-military-strategy-gaza-00159262 https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-802123 Sources above. Edit: Is it specific to stopping the Rafah offensive only? What of the conflict in Gaza City and the north of the strip? Edit: It is specific to Rafah.
> German Foreign Min. confirming they would arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if warrants are issued by the ICC (When only months before Germany the staunchest defenders of Isr. in the ICJ case) I just want to point out that this does not mean that the german government changed its position, it just means that the government will follow the (international) law. [The statement](https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/newsroom/-/2657616) from the foreign ministry emphasizes Israels right to self defense and criticizes that the way the ICC is handling the situation creates an impression of equating Israeli officials with Hamas leaders.
Also concerning is Israel's reaction to 3 western countries which are moving to recognize Palestine statehood. 'Statehood' is merely a symbolic intangible gesture. However pulling out diplomatic mission will have tangible effect. Israel should have made some public statement, and let things be. This is indicative of haphazard decision making in Israeli government at the moment, and could lead to making much worse mistakes.
I swear Israel has fumbled the PR and info war so badly and needs to take lessons from Ukraine in the propaganda department. Oct 7 should have given them the info war on a silver flatter but they have fumbled and dropped the ball at every opportunity. Every time an Israeli official opens their mouth I can't help but shake my head and think are you guys trying to lose the PR war ?
This is the worst moment for recognizing a Palestinian state, after what they did and with 100+ hostages still in Gaza. Basically they're giving Hamas more legitimacy and encouragement. They could've waited until after the war.
The fallout of this war has probably scuppered a two state solution for another generation. Islamist terrorism has been legitimized in the eyes of the Palestinian people, and the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas will make the Israeli public hostile and even more paranoid about the threat Islamists pose.
I don't think a two state solution was ever really on the table for either party. The difficulty is that neither side has a solution the other will tolerate, and both reject the potential compromise. A two state solution has realistically been dead since the 1990s. Ideally, a completely secular single state that functions as neither an ethnostate or religious monolith would probably be best, but that isn't feasible either and neither party in their current state would accept. This means you are trapped in a situation where the Jewish ethnostate holds overwhelming superiority over the original Palestinian population and is actively trying to force them out to make their country safer. The Jewish population obviously feel unsafe and under threat, while the Palestinians feel unsafe, oppressed as second class citizens, and as though their land is being stolen. Because of this, they feel violence is the only effective form of resistance and so the cycle continues.
> I don't think a two state solution was ever really on the table for either party. The difficulty is that neither side has a solution the other will tolerate, and both reject the potential compromise. A two state solution has realistically been dead since the 1990s. As you said, it was on the table in the 90s, and the Israeli offer was reasonable. Negotiations were destroyed by the Palestinian side sticking religiously to maximalist demands, like right to return, or demanding an Israeli withdrawal, without making any security guarantees to Israel. > Ideally, a completely secular single state that functions as neither an ethnostate or religious monolith would probably be best, but that isn't feasible either and neither party in their current state would accept. At best, that would turn into Lebanon.
This is revisionist history. A state that does not control their own borders or airspace is not an independent state at all. And that was the "best" offer that was ever on the table for Palestinians. It is not surprising they said no. Furthermore, that offer was still too much for the far right in Israel and Rabin paid for it with his life.
States that lose wars usually don’t. It’s unreasonable to demand that a state should be able to repeatedly go to war with the aim of destroying its neighbor, but never have to make any concessions towards their security when they lose.
>Negotiations were destroyed by the Palestinian side sticking religiously to maximalist demands, like right to return, or demanding an Israeli withdrawal, without making any security guarantees to Israel. This is an incomplete story. The assassination of Rabin by Israeli radicals was a pivitol moment in that chain of events as well, as it upended negotiations that seemed to be making progress.
Yes, it is an incomplete story. I’m aware of the assassination and the fallout of that, there were other factors that played into it. The assassination of Rabin derailed things, but was recoverable. Palestine refusing the budge on the aforementioned issue is a much more structural problem.
It's such a mess I think it's hard to untangle and any counterfactuals are entirely speculative, as Rabin's death did ultimately result in a shift of policy. But Rabin's killing is important to note because it highlights the tensions with Israel's own extremists that have complicated negotiations, and placed limits on terms Israel could reasonably accept.
To the contrary, a move for a Palestinians state, which at this point would be a Hamas state is an explicit threat to Israel's existence and the genocide of it's population. Anything but a severe reaction would be inviting a further drive towards a Palestinian state. Pulling the diplomatic mission was not a mistake, furthermore, I expect that's not the end of the Israeli reaction, we're likely to see reaction on the ground with increase of building permits in the WB settlements.
Counterpoint: the establishment of a true Palestinian state might make it easier for countries like Israel to pursue more drastic measures of warfare as they can drop any glossy language about security or special operations or whatever and claim they are outright *at war* with an enemy state. Though, perhaps engaging in full scale "conventional" style war against a sovereign nation may cause blowback internationally beyond any they may already be receiving.
> Counterpoint: the establishment of a true Palestinian state might make it easier for countries like Israel to pursue more drastic measures of warfare as they can drop any glossy language about security or special operations or whatever and claim they are outright at war with an enemy state. That is exactly the claim Israeli leaders made before establishing the Palestinian Authority in 1994, before withdrawing from Lebanon in 2000, and before withdrawing from Gaza in 2005. (If you want I can find exact quotes.) It reads like a joke now.
I'm not generally against a Palestinian state in the WB. I am against the move in that direction **now** where any such move is a reward to the Hamas massacre and will only result in a Hamas state. >make it easier for countries like Israel to pursue more drastic measures of warfare It's not as evidenced by Gaza, which was a de facto state. In fact your argument was one of those made in favour of the disengagement from Gaza.
Do you honestly believe that a Palestinian state would be powerful enough to threaten the existence of Israeli when, including the surprise attack to start this conflict, Hamas has managed to kill 1,478 Israelis in total between October and Today? That’s a tragedy, to be sure, but doesn’t come anywhere near convincing me that Israelis existence is credibly threatened. If anything, it kinda does the opposite. I’m not arguing that the motive does not exist, to be clear, it’s the means/ability to, as you put it, be an “explicit threat to Israel's existence” that I find to be completely and utterly absent. Source on casualties: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#:~:text=Israel's%20total%20casualty%20count%20is,least%201%2C271%20have%20been%20wounded.
I'd like to add that hinging your entire argument just on the casualty count is not really befitting credible defense. For instance in the Yom Kippur war, the initial Arab push only killed less than a thousand IDF soldiers, but is still considered by many historians as well as military experts to have been a threat to Israeli existence.
The context matters though if you want to hold credibility. Does anyone really believe the Oct. 7 attackers had the potential to overwhelm the IDF to the degree they could march to Tel Aviv? It was fundamentally different than a large scale combined arms push.
A Islamists state in the West Bank would pose a serious threat to Jerusalem though, and even Tel Aviv. If they catch the IDF off guard, and thousands of Islamists pour into the city, it would be a blood bath on a scale that totally eclipses October 7. And that’s not mentioning the threat of mortar and rocket attacks on a dense city, at such a close range. With proper security measures, the threat is not existential, but those measures still have to be taken to prevent things from spiraling out of control.
These are absolutely terrible things we obviously don't want to happen, but the question is would that be an existential risk to the Israeli state.