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

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

#611

Post by ghostwriter »

oblio wrote: post #525
gitfan86 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have not seen what the Germany Army is capable of since 80 years ago. Does Putin really want to find out what has changed since then?

The German Army isn't capable of much at the moment. And even if it were, no NATO member will set foot in Ukraine while this war and the following insurgency are happening. What will happen is, depending on how hard Putin pushes, the reaction will be just as strong. More attacks targeting civilians? More weapons sent to Ukraine. Harder sanctions, with actual teeth. I wouldn't be shocked if by next winter 60%+ of the…

> I wouldn't be shocked if by next winter 60%+ of the gas supply for Western Europe will be covered from other vendors, more or less bankrupting Russia

you will be shocked to discover that Russia is going to fuel China's economy instead [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-28/gazprom-p...

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

#612

Post by fouc »

Cd00d wrote: post #353
jl6 wrote: post #261

I guess everyone's weighing in with their view, so why not? Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way... It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local…

suzerainty You can't just lob a hundred dollar word out like that! I spent several moments trying to figure out what your typo was before allowing the possibility that you didn't have one. a relationship in which one state or other polity controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy

Given inflation, it's probably a thousand dollar word now.

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

#613

Post by krisoft »

UltraViolence wrote: post #460
PaulHoule wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

I'm puzzled why we haven't created something that can compete with S-300 / S-400 / S-500. At the very least the Patriot SAM should be redesigned to allow for vertical launching to allow shooting in all directions. If you point Patriot one way and you get ambushed from behind you're basically caught with your pants down. At the very least you'd need four Patriot missile launchers pointing in all directions to prevent…

> I'm puzzled why we haven't created something that can compete with S-300 / S-400 / S-500.

In my opinion it is because the American way of fighting a war doesn’t need it. Let say there is a troublesome country who would want to fly airplanes to shoot at American troops. The war plans against such a threat would start with two steps: 1st supress their air defences. 2nd gain full air dominance.

Supression of air defences is a polite way to say that they pulverize anything which can shoot US airplanes from the ground or even detect US airplanes using a radar.

Gaining full air dominance is a polite way to say that they aim to pulverize all enemy airplanes, runways, taxiways, fueling equipment and maintenance infrastructure.

If that is your method of operation why would you need mobile, survivable air defenses. People who routinely plan on destroying clouds (the source of rain) don’t need an umbrella.

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

#614

Post by denton-scratch »

kyboren wrote: post #430
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to find a variant of (a) that allows Putin to save face Recognize the annexation of Crimea and promise immediate sanctions rollbacks the moment the last Russian troop leaves Ukraine (other than Donbas and Luhansk, that ship has sailed).

I also think this is the most viable offramp. Everyone gets to plausibly claim victory, if not total victory. Russia keeps the money pit dear to the hearts of many Russians and doesn't become a Chinese vassal state. Ukraine ends the bloodshed and saves their sovereignty for the cost of what they have already lost. There will be sticking points, for sure, notably around Putin himself, reparations, and yes, the status…

Sorry, but I don't think there's an offramp.

I can't see the Russian leadership backing down from their stated goals. That means they have to subdue Ukraine, and probably Finland, Estonia and Poland too. If they don't win in at least Ukraine, then they have lost badly, and their economy is destroyed.

I don't think they'll settle now for a piece of Crimea or a piece of Donbas. The entire story is that the whole of Ukraine is a bogus state.

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

#615

Post by ethbr0 »

ashwagary wrote: post #444
raducu wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's face it, Russian airforce, russian army and russian equipment suck, but are good enough in this situation. The Emperor Putler has no clothes.

I've seen reports that Russia's only deployed 5-10% of their forces. This might be a slow steady escalation to allow evacuations of civilians and test the endurance of battalion forces. Any victories for Ukrainian forces may be short lived, as Russia seems to be using this opportunity to guage hot and cold zones.

~80% of assembled combat force, from the sources I've read [0]

[0] http://www.iswresearch.org/2022/03/russian-offensive-campaig...

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

#616

Post by koonsolo »

atlantas wrote: post #229
slavoingilizov wrote: post #13

Many conflicting viewpoints here. Sure, there's been less of a push from Russia than everyone expected, but it's not like Ukraine controls the sky either. Are Ukranians really still flying? If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no? Russians driving vehicles bumper to bumper shows VERY strong confidence that they own the sky, so things might not be as rosy for U…

Right, I'd love to hear a good explanation for why they're not attacking a 40-mile long convoy on a road. At least bomb the front of the convoy, wtf. That Russia sent in such a rich sitting duck target and it's not being attacked suggests they have air superiority and we're getting bad information.

There is something weird going on with that convoy. It's not moving forward for some reason (claims of fuel shortages)

Maybe they didn't bomb the convoy, but just the supply, like they did before.

Once those soldiers go searching for food, the Ukrainians can take some extra tanks for their army ;).

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

#617

Post by ethbr0 »

freeopinion wrote: post #610
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to find a variant of (a) that allows Putin to save face Recognize the annexation of Crimea and promise immediate sanctions rollbacks the moment the last Russian troop leaves Ukraine (other than Donbas and Luhansk, that ship has sailed).

So you mean to provide Russia with a more stable platform from which to invade again in say, 5 years? You don't change any of the context that led Russia to invade in the first place. You leave intact an aggressor who has repeatedly and consistently expanded. You gave them Crimea and hoped that would appease them. You tolerated their aggressions in eastern Ukraine. Now you will just give them Donbas and Luhansk and h…

Give them Crimea in exchange for an agreement that Ukraine be allowed to apply to join NATO.

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

#618

Post by rurp »

itronitron wrote: post #178
ALittleLight wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another part of this is US intelligence sources have an incentive to overstate Russia's strength. A strong scary Russia better justifies American military spending.

Unfortunately that masks the scarier scenario of a failing state with thousands of nuclear weapons.

While both scenarios are terrifying, I don't agree that the failing state is scarier. Nuclear weapons take a lot organizational skill and competence to maintain and deploy, which gets much harder for a failing state to muster. Plus we've been through this before with the Soviet Union where a disturbing number of nukes went unaccounted for, but none managed to get deployed by terrorists.

By contrast, a functioning dictatorship means a single madman can pretty much decide to destroy humanity at any point.

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

#619

Post by Paradigma11 »

speeder wrote: post #230
gamblor956 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "stumped" is not actually in the article. FTA: the issue is that Russia made a huge show of force at the start of the invasion but has apparently held back from actually using much of it (by air or ground). This war could have been over the day it started if Russia had used maximal force, and the conservative approach their actually using maximizes risks and casualties. And that's what has the experts confused: t…

I don't understand why people just don't believe Russia is being literal with their intentions. They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine, they just don't want NATO to be able to invade them by land. I'd you assume this is true, what they are doing make complete sense.

Because there is a plethora of reasons given that you can choose from.

Denazification of the jewish russian speaking president.

Lawrow: Ukraine wants to aquire nukes and russia must prevent this. Propably trolling.

Half hearted false flags operations: Bombed car where the suspect was arrested the day before. Bombed out building with months old trees in it....

The aforementioned NATO ambitions of ukraine. ukraine was denied membership 14 years ago and things look even more impossible now with the territorial conflict about the crimea. Paradoxically russia is making ukraines medium term NATO membership more likely by solving the crimea conflict.

Russia wants to unite all Rus and everything else is just a smokescreen. Putin has given some rather 19th century speeches to that effect and there was this article that was published and then quickly taken down in some state owned newspaper (i think) https://thefrontierpost.com/the-new-world-order/ Pretty scary stuff.

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

#620

Post by rootusrootus »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #604
sokoloff wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a 19th century war with 21st century weapons. Very little of the weapons involved are actually 21st century. Most are 20th century.

Depends on if MANPADS, TOW, and Drones become the dominant forces of the battlefield.

All of those are definitely 20th century weapons.
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