Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

Originally Posted by Norton

The risk is only to Russian front line troops. Will take time but once Ukraine achieves air superiorty there will be a whole new deadly battlefield condition for those poor bastards.

Money in the bank, Norts. I have lots of good news to post. I am going to refrain. As I want it to be definitive, so there can be no doubt.

Originally Posted by Norton

Will take time but once Ukraine achieves air superiorty there will be a whole new deadly battlefield condition for those poor bastards.

They are already getting smoked.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Since Biden approved the transfer of Danish and Dutch F-16s, I guess they are Block 20 MLU varients and as far as ordinace I would hope they will get AIM-120 AMRAAM and of course AAGM-158 JASSM.

I guess that means 120-B and 120-C AMRAAM variants but not the 120-D. Harpoon would also be possible for these F-16s.

Hard to believe I was running around selling F16A Unit Training Devices to Taiwan, Korea and Thailand in 1986/7. Low tech compared to current equivalants but cheap at $1.4 mil back then.

Originally Posted by bsnub

I have lots of good news to post. I am going to refrain. As I want it to be definitive, so there can be no doubt.

Just remember there is also bad news. A Ukraine unit was ambushed by Russia artillery East of Urozhaine yesterday. No Counter artillery fire and loss of several pieces of heavy armour and men. I don't have the exact details but it looked like the Russians were expecting them.

Originally Posted by bsnub

I am sure that that sad vatnik clown Helga will be triggered to find out that Denmark will be supplying F-16s to Ukraine.

Oh my God

This comes as a total and triggering surprise to me.

Horror !

Originally Posted by malmomike77

one more to go and you'll have purged the forum of vatniks

He is superiour at stupidity attrition.

I'll stick around for a day or two though

For the entertainment.

And I think, that I'm the only friend he's got left

Deeper dig would need own thread a taste here, but reflects his links to Russia and not an honest broker.

Reso-Garantia, founded in 1991, is one of Russia’s biggest insurance companies, specialising in vehicle insurance, with about 11 million customers. In 2007, the French insurer Axa acquired 36.7% of the company. Axa is a major client of the legal firm Realyze, co-founded by Sarkozy in 1987.
The national financial prosecutor confirmed Sarkozy had been placed under “preliminary investigation”. This is the first stage of a legal inquiry to establish whether there are any charges to answer. If the investigation concludes there are, the former president could be mis en examen, put under formal investigation

Originally Posted by david44

Nicolas Sarkozy is the first former president to be sentenced to prison

And why he's the first is the shocking part.

That little fellow is corrupt to the core.

Morally and 'on the take' wise.

Seems like he isn't 'our corrupt son of a bitch' anymore.

How inconvenient for you

Originally Posted by Troy

A Ukraine unit was ambushed by Russia artillery East of Urozhaine yesterday. No Counter artillery fire and loss of several pieces of heavy armour and men. I don't have the exact details but it looked like the Russians were expecting them.

You have to be very careful with the information that you consume, as propaganda is everywhere. You need to cross-reference everything you read.

‘We Cannot Win’ Says Top Russian Commander The leader of the Russian battalion defeated at liberated Urozhaine calls for “freezing the front” after his unreinforced troops were devastated in a rout. The Russian commander of the “Vostok” Battalion fighting in southern Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukraine will not be defeated and suggested that Russia freeze the war along current frontlines. Alexander Khodakovsky made the candid concession yesterday on his Telegram channel after Russian forces, including his own troops, were devastatingly defeated by Ukrainian marines earlier this week at Urozhaine in the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk regional border area. “Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no,” Khodakovsky, a former official of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday. “When I talk to myself about our destiny in this war, I mean that we will not crawl forward, like the [Ukrainians], turning everything into [destroyed] Bakhmuts in our path. And, I do not foresee the easy occupation of cities,” he said. “We can [though] enter a phase that is most unfavorable for Ukraine in its ‘independent’ state: a phase of neither peace nor war. We could be in this phase if, instead of the special military operation, the [currently occupied] territories were recognized and officially taken under guardianship. But it would require a completely different twist of history,” Khodakovsky said

https://twitter.com/FAB87F/status/1693078445507383308

Russians fail to retake Urozhaine, 26 combat clashes recorded in last 24 hours ? General Staff report | Ukrainska Pravda

Originally Posted by helge

This comes as a total and triggering surprise to me.

Originally Posted by helge

He is superiour at stupidity attrition.

What does that even mean?

Originally Posted by helge

I'll stick around for a day or two though

No need, feel free to cut bait.

Originally Posted by helge

nd I think, that I'm the only friend he's got left

Drunk and delusional again I see.

^ ..and you need to be more balanced in your reporting.

Denys Davydov mentions the same ambush in his report:

Originally Posted by Troy

and you need to be more balanced in your reporting.

I have been out of the house for the last 12 hours. I am still getting caught up. That said, I just watched the telegram video it is not geolocated and there are no other sources verifying that that happened, several commentors claim that it is old or that it happened somewhere else. As I said before, you can not rely on one source alone. Denys is a great source and is usually very reliable, but he has been wrong about things from time to time, until I see it from other sources it will be off to the side in the questionable pile.

The Netherlands and the United Kingdom back in May announced a new initiative to train Ukrainian pilots to fly Lockheed Martin-made F-16 fighters.

The training program all but guaranteed at least one of Ukraine’s foreign allies would donate surplus F-16s to the war effort. The question was—which? And how many of the nimble, supersonic F-16s would it take to make a difference in Russia’s war on Ukraine?

Three months later, we can answer both questions. As predicted, the Dutch and Danish governments both have pledged to Ukraine many of the F-16s their air forces are putting into storage as new Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters gradually replace them.

These F-16s should extend a profound shift in the way Ukraine deploys air power—a shift toward long-range strikes that lately has added years to the average life-expectancy of Ukrainian air force pilots.

The American-designed planes also could grow the Ukrainian air force by half.

The Dutch air force will hand over to the Ukrainian air force 42 F-16A/B Mid-Life Update jets. The Danish air force will transfer an additional 19 F-16A/B MLUs. All 61 F-16s should arrive in Ukraine by early next year.

It might take a while to train pilots. The Ukrainian government has tapped 32 pilots for the first round of F-16 training. Four are proficient in English, a prerequisite for NATO flight training. The other 28 are learning the language in the United Kingdom.

“Then they’re going to get a little bit more training on propellers, and then go down to France and fly in the Alpha Jet [training plane] for a little bit,“ Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Air Forces-Africa, told the Defense Writer’s Group. “That all is going to take time.”

The F-16s aren’t new. The airframes date from the 1980s. But their avionics and sensors are modern. Most importantly, the F-16s are fully compatible with an array of modern Western munitions.

The Ukrainian air force already has armed some of its ex-Soviet fighters and bombers with American-, British- and French-made munitions, including AGM-88 anti-radar missiles, GPS-guided glide bombs and cruise missiles. Ukrainian pilots increasingly launch their weapons while flying on the Ukrainian side of the front line, thus avoiding all but the longest-range Russian surface-to-air missiles.

Shifting to long-range attacks, the Ukrainian air force sharply has cut its loss rate. The air force wrote off no fewer than 62 fixed-wing aircraft in 2022; so far in 2023, it has lost seven. Reequipping with F-16s should further reduce the losses.

Sixty-one F-16s is enough F-16s to replace around half of the Ukrainian air force’s front-line inventory of 125 or so Cold War-vintage Mikoyan MiG-29s, Sukhoi Su-24s, Sukhoi Su-25s and Sukhoi Su-27s.

While the Ukrainians have lost nearly 70 jets since Russia widened its war on Ukraine 18 months ago, Kyiv’s regiments have made good their losses through donations and the restoration of grounded airframes.

Ukraine has as many warplanes now as it did in February 2022, so as F-16s and F-16 pilots begin arriving, Kyiv has two choices. It can replace half its aging Soviet-era jets, or it can grow its air force by half.

With F-16s, Ukraine Could Grow Its Air Force By Half

Guess which high heeled war criminal is too scared to go to the BRICS summit?

Chechen Fighters Claim Ukrainian Drones With ‘Claws’ Are Abducting Russian Troops

Chechen fighters under the command of Vladimir Putin crony Ramzan Kadyrov claim Ukraine has been abducting wounded Russian troops from the battlefield using giant drones equipped with pincers. A member of the Akhmat battalion was quoted by Russian media as calling the drones “Baba Yaga”—an ogress or witch from Slavic folklore who snatches and eats children. Except according to him, this battlefield “Baba Yaga” also has massive claws capable of carrying troops off into the sky. “Such large drones, only slightly more modernized, have previously been used by the enemy… in order to steal our wounded. The drone is equipped with special devices that look like claws, with which it captures a person who is not able to run away, hide or fight [the drone] off,” the soldier was quoted as saying. He said these drones hunt for prey at night and can only be destroyed by flamethrower or grenade launcher.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheche...russian-troops

Sounds like the chechens have a steady supply of quite powerful weed

Originally Posted by helge

Sounds like the chechens have a steady supply of quite powerful weed

Ergot

Originally Posted by Norton

Hecker said that F-16s with AIM-120 AMRAAM dogfight missiles

The AIM-120 is primarily a BVR missile, although it could be used at shorter ranges the F-16 will have better shorter range missiles fitted.

Originally Posted by Troy

a BVR missile

Had to look this up.

Read this:

Criticism[edit]

The efficiency of BVR air-to-air missiles has been criticized.
A 2005 paper by USAF officer Patrick Higby showed that BVR missiles fell short of expected performance, despite incurring great cost. Because such missiles required large radars, they made aircraft heavier and increased drag, increasing aircraft procurement and operating costs.^[3] Fighters with BVR tended to be less agile than previous ones. Fighter pilots have been reluctant to use BVR missiles at BVR range because of difficulty in distinguishing friends and foes. As a result, most BVR missiles are fired at visual range. Western airforces only scored 4 BVR kills out of 528 kills made during 1965–1982; most kills during that period were made with guns or WVR missiles (AIM-9 Sidewinder).^[3]
The increased success rate of BVR combat during 1991 Gulf War may have significantly depended on other factors, such as assistance of AWACS, NCTR system of F-15Cs, as well as enemy incompetence. None of the Iraqi pilots took any evasive measures, either because of poor training or their radar warning receivers malfunctioned.^[3] One major issue with BVR is still unreliable IFF technology (Identification friend or foe).^[3][4]

^ Interesting Helge but I think the AIM-120 is a pretty successful BVR missile with reasonable ranges. The longer range Russian R-37M being used on the MiG-31 is proving to be very successful against Ukraine aircraft. These aircraft will still be a significant threat even when Ukraine has F-16s. A lot of advancements since 1982, that's for sure.

You need to know you have a missile fired against you before you can take avoiding action and detecting them before it is too late is not a simple task.

Originally Posted by Troy

but

I have no idea, Troy

Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ Gets the Boot Weeks After Wagner Coup

Russia’s Gen. Sergei Surovikin has officially been relieved of duty after reportedly spending weeks on house arrest over his suspected involvement in June’s deadly military coup.


The news was first announced Tuesday by journalist Alexei Venediktov, who posted the text from a presidential decree ordering Surovikin’s dismissal as the commander of the Aerospace Forces on Twitter. The decree was not publicly available.


Several pro-Kremlin Telegram channels also shared news of Surovikin’s firing, writing that President Vladimir Putin’s decree was signed last week but kept under wraps.


Surovikin, who served as the deputy commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, has not been seen in public since June 24, when he was recorded pleading with the notorious Wagner Group to end their violent uprising against military leadership in Russia.


Reports soon emerged that he may have had advance knowledge of the mutiny started by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, with whom he had close ties dating back to when they worked together in Syria. Prigozhin, for his part, had routinely praised Surovikin’s handling of the war against Ukraine even as he railed against other top military brass.


Speculation about Surovikin’s whereabouts has run rampant for months, with numerous reports saying he’d been detained and interrogated over the brief-lived military coup. His disappearance led some to question if he was even still alive.


Last week, the well-connected Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU cited unnamed sources who said Surovikin had been urged to make sure he is simply “forgotten” amid the scandal. A decision on his fate “must be made by one person, and the later this happens, the more he will cool down,” a source was quoted saying of Putin.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia...agner-uprising