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What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

reuters.com

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Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#121

Post by Anechoic »

adventured wrote: post #59

The West should be offering ~$5 million per Russian jet that defects, along with EU citizenship. The US should put up a billion dollars for the program to get it started. Land the jets in NATO territory. Let's put troop loyalty to the test and see if we can't drain some of their best hardware. We're not allowed to attack Russia directly so let's plunder them. Our leaders are not being nearly creative enough in this s…

The West should be offering ~$5 million per Russian jet that defects, along with EU citizenship.

Skeptical that would be effective for two reasons:

1. Pilots that have family back home probably won't be eager to take the offer

2. Russia has shown no qualms about targeted assassinations in foreign lands.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#122

Post by mysecretaccount »

boc wrote: post #50

I think we need to consider the possibility that much of the Russian army only existed on paper, and that the true strength was overinflated by trickling up good news only throughout all ranks of the military.[1] Readiness was overstated. Equipment was overstated. Training was for parades, not combat. Everyone in the Russian military had assumed they'd never actually fight a real war, so they could grift and sell rat…

Hopefully this is true of their nuclear arsenal...

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#123

Post by gvb »

mrlonglong wrote: post #79
adventured wrote: post #59

The West should be offering ~$5 million per Russian jet that defects, along with EU citizenship. The US should put up a billion dollars for the program to get it started. Land the jets in NATO territory. Let's put troop loyalty to the test and see if we can't drain some of their best hardware. We're not allowed to attack Russia directly so let's plunder them. Our leaders are not being nearly creative enough in this s…

Why not sell Ukraine some of these nice B52 planes to seek and destroy convoys on the ground ?

MIG-29s which they are already flying, not B-52s which are useless to them.

The deal fell apart, however.

https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/is-poland-sending-fighter-...

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#124

Post by WalterBright »

mstipetic wrote: post #78
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

They are afraid of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them wa…

I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.

Heat seeking missiles started development in 1940s. In the US, they began as an unfunded rogue project. The infrared guidance system was simple and very successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#125

Post by PaulHoule »

mstipetic wrote: post #78
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

They are afraid of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them wa…

I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.

Surface-to-air missiles were long a priority of the Soviets. They caused our fliers no end of trouble in Vietnam: this guy got shot down by a SAM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war

The Russian military is organized around a land defense of their homeland since they don't have the natural barriers the U.S. has (e.g. they last got invaded in 1941, we last got invaded in 1812.)

You might think they'd invest in fixed SAM systems but mobile SAM systems are so more survivable in a war because the radar for a SAM is highly visible. You really want to hide those systems in terrain and ambush planes going by.

Systems like that are most effective when they operate in a networked mode together with AWACS airplanes like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_A-50

which use a "look down" pulse doppler radar which can see cruise missiles, UAVs and other low-flying threats. This is a great complement to the radar on a Patriot missile battery which is optimized to ballistic missile threats. Russia's latest S-500 system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-500_missile_system

has crazy long range, it competes with

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...

as an anti missile missile system but also it can (try to) take out a distant AWACS airplane with a direct shot.

The Russians DO NOT want an enemy to have air superiority over them anywhere.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#126

Post by tokai »

bombcar wrote: post #106
tedivm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They hit the fuel train that was supplying the convoy with a drone strike and released the footage. The convoy has been stalled for days now, both due to fighting and due to supply chain issues (such as having their supply train blow up).

Isn't the supply train in the south in Crimea and the convoy in the north near Kiev?

Irrelevant on the question of Russian air superiority over Ukraine. The Ukrainian air force is clearly still operating.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#127

Post by HideousKojima »

consp wrote: post #113
HideousKojima wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated). It definitely isn't "completely fabricated": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely i…

> It definitely isn't "completely fabricated": It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump. There is no foundation in fact all American's are but there are small groups he as the President supported who were Nazi's. This is a plain lie to serve their propaganda.

>It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump.

Were any far-right groups formally integrated into the US military, federal law enforcement, or anything else like that during Trump's presidency? That's the difference here, the Azov battalion was a private militia that was made an actual part of the Ukrainian military.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#128

Post by PaulHoule »

_moof wrote: post #116
mstipetic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.

I'm guessing all the engineers you know are web software pukes. There are loads of people who could build these today.

Instead people like me make "spatial computing" led hula hoops and other harmless stuff like that... And those EEG cat ears!

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#129

Post by Mikeb85 »

watwut wrote: post #10
farseer wrote: post #8

Quoted post unavailable.

The war is already in the indiscriminate killing phase and moving towards just destroy city phase. Should be there in few days. Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars.

> Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars.

There's plenty of videos of Russian troops not attacking civilians and surrendering. But there's also videos of them attacking civilian targets...

It seems there's some Slavic fellowship at play but that it's mostly among regular soldiers, not the leadership. Then again, maybe the gross incompetence shown by the Russians is a result of said fellowship + plausible deniability...

Either way, the war's gone shockingly bad for the Russians. Whether or not Ukraine's reports are entirely correct, everyone can agree it's embarrassing to the Russians.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#130

Post by phicoh »

platinumrad wrote: post #58
glogla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, after Grozny and Aleppo, anyone saying Russians are trying to limit destruction is deluded or a shill. Russian military strategy has been to force surrender through causing as much civilian death as possible for a while now. Based on his speeches, both before invasion and the leaked one that was supposed to go out after a win, Putins objective is genocide. "The Ukrainian question", dude is literally quoting Hitl…

There is a huge difference between what people are willing to do to racial and cultural others v.s. what they are willing to do to people who look, speak, and live more or less just like them. Yes, Russia was extremely brutal in Chechnya and in Syria. But consider how brutal the US was in Iraq, and consider how we would operate in a hypothetical war against Canada.

There is not much difference bwtween people from Germany, France and the UK, yet, World War I was one of the most horrible wars in history. A few decades later, there still was not much difference between people from the UK and Germany yet the bombings of the German cities by the allied forces were some of the horrible in history.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa... for one of the full horror stories.

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