History in the Making: Russian Invasion

Also of interest:

Pentagon official: Ukraine has not received whole aircraft from Europe, but parts to get some of their inoperable aircraft in operable condition. Because of this, Ukrainians now have more than 20 additional aircraft available to them. These include fighters and bombers

I also ran across this, which is interesting if for nothing else, a quick tour of the Moskva (including showing the deployed SS-4 launchers).  It also shows how the Russians where using unguided bombs even in Syria and some of their general motivations.  The Russians seem effective in fighting forces that cannot fight back....

Also note the response to the question about bombing civilians ("well... the US....")

This FPRI discussion is excellent, and addresses a lot of the things that have been talked about here.

RX Reven' said:

 

My understanding is that F35's fly in pairs....

Yes, from what I have seen, they are a bit more of a command and control plane then a direct attack plane in general.

One of the expected operational profiles would be the (rather stealthy) and electronically quite F-35, poking into enemy airspace and spotting targets, which it passes off to other planes who, for example, might launch an anti-radiation missile or anti-air missile at that target much like as they would if they found the target.

They also are supposed to work along side large drones, that can launch their own drones (no word if they will launch drones... :)  )  so, a sort of massive force multiplier for the F-35.  I expect they will also be used for even more forward activity.

It's a strange new world in the air.

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/04/08/usaf-valkyrie-launches-drone/

02Pilot said:

In reply to aircooled :

I haven't heard a peep on this, but let's ask the obvious question: what response could NATO have, short of flying into the war zone, that would be a clear and direct response to a Tu-22M flying over Russian and Ukrainian airspace? Scramble some fighters? Issue a sternly-worded communique? They certainly aren't going to put anything nuclear on heightened alert. The Tu-22M carries conventional munitions as well, and I did see a report of a "large aerial bomb" being dropped on the steel plant in Mariupol, so that's likely what it was doing. If Russia were to go nuclear - and again, I see this as highly unlikely - that seems like the last place they'd want to put one, given the proximity of their own troops.

I wonder if we have any laser systems with sufficient range to be on "our" side of the border and leave pinprick holes in the odd Tu-22...   It's not like you can assign nationality to a burn hole.  

Slightly off topic, but have you guys seen Israel's "Iron Beam" laser defense system? They just did a successful round of testing on it. Really impressive tech. Looks like it could shoot down almost anything within range. 

In reply to stroker :

I'm not a technical expert, but knowing a tiny bit about directed energy weapons, I'm pretty confident in saying that we don't.

The whole "nuclear capable bomber" thing is a bit of a red herring IMHO.  The Russians only have 3 models of bomber (as distinguished from ground attack aircraft), the Tu-95 (turboprop) Tu-22M (jet), and the Tu-160 (also jet, looks similar to a B1b).  They're ALL capable of launching nukes, as are all three of the US types of bomber.  Just like a B-52 in the air is much more likely to mean a conventional attack than a nuclear one, the same thing is true of the Russians.

In reply to aircooled :

I don't understand our reasoning behind not giving Ukraine whole jets. What's the difference between Stingers, Javelins, Mig jet parts or whole Mig jets? What's Put Put going to do different than what he is already doing?

I read early on in the talking about Poland giving Ukraine their old Mig-29's to Ukraine and replacing them with US versions of the F-16's was that the F-16's that we, the US use have superior avionics than the export versions that we sell to our allies and that we are not ready to fork over our best technology.

Probably a good thing that I am not in charge, but if I was, I would declare a no fly zone over all of western Ukraine and take the fight to deranged Put Put. What was it that George W Bush's defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's assistant Kenneth Adelman said at the beginning of the Enduring Freedom war against Saddam Hussein? "I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk". 

It also seems to me that the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad could use some liberating and cleansing also.

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

I think the real issue is the bureaucracy of war within our own and the NATO systems. All involved are happy to invest in war. All involved are happy to say they support Ukraine. Even to the point of essentially fighting the war behind the scenes. So why not take a stand and fight beside the Ukrainians?

In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :

Hey, all the benefits of a war for the military industrial complex (huge amounts of $$$$ going to arms manufacturing) without our soldiers actually going to die? No wonder our politicians like it this way.

A least that's the cynical way of looking at it. 

VolvoHeretic said:

In reply to aircooled :

I don't understand our reasoning behind not giving Ukraine whole jets. What's the difference between Stingers, Javelins, Mig jet parts or whole Mig jets? What's Put Put going to do different than what he is already doing?

I read early on in the talking about Poland giving Ukraine their old Mig-29's to Ukraine and replacing them with US versions of the F-16's was that the F-16's that we, the US use have superior avionics than the export versions that we sell to our allies and that we are not ready to fork over our best technology.

Probably a good thing that I am not in charge, but if I was, I would declare a no fly zone over all of western Ukraine and take the fight to deranged Put Put. What was it that George W Bush's defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's assistant Kenneth Adelman said at the beginning of the Enduring Freedom war against Saddam Hussein? "I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk". 

It also seems to me that the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad could use some liberating and cleansing also.

The problem is, if you'll pardon the modern jargon, the optics of it. Consider the following two possible statements by Putin:

"Russian troops were killed by jets provided by America. We must retaliate."

"Russian troops were killed by jets with control surfaces and landing gear provided by America. We must retaliate."

The first feeds his preferred narrative of victimization; the second just sounds ridiculous.

The other problem is the time it will take to get the NATO donor countries' pilots trained up on new types. This is not a short process. The conversion window leaves them vulnerable.

"Liberating and cleansing" is a phrase that I suspect many Eastern Europeans are familiar, and quite uncomfortable, with, no matter who's behind it.

Finally, as an aside, Ken Adelman was one of my grad school professors. Nice guy with some great stories. He had a whole wall in his house covered with political cartoons mocking him that he'd collected.

In reply to Apexcarver :

Cynical, but not original. Check out Merchants of Death by Engelbrecht and Hanighen (1934). This mindset led directly to the US Neutrality Acts that limited our ability to assist Britain in the early days of WW2.

VolvoHeretic said:

In reply to aircooled :

I don't understand our reasoning behind not giving Ukraine whole jets. What's the difference between Stingers, Javelins, Mig jet parts or whole Mig jets? What's Put Put going to do different than what he is already doing?

Yeah, I don't get it either.  The Polish had the jets to give but where unwilling to transfer them directly to Ukraine.  They wanted to send them to Ramstein, and let the US deliver them, but we didn't want to do that.

Now, we are shipping them actually artillery pieced and APC etc directly to Ukraine. Putin kept talking about "escalation" and "how bad nukes are".  It's kind of hard to believe they where intimidated by that, but, I guess so?  I guess now, we are not only less impressed by his military, we are less impressed by his rhetoric.

My guess with whole jet transfer thing is that either we didn't have export versions of F16s ready to give Poland or the training capacity or something else to provide the fighters they needed in the time frame required.

At the time, diplomatics were a bit more sensitive.  As this drags on I think you'll see slightly less resistance to wholesale supply from The West.  

93EXCivic said:

My guess with whole jet transfer thing is that either we didn't have export versions of F16s ready to give Poland or the training capacity or something else to provide the fighters they needed in the time frame required.

NBC reported this on April 14th, 2021...

We've had over a year to prepare...I'll leave it at that.

In reply to aircooled :

On a lighter note, I think that I have discovered the true reason for all of the problems in eastern Europe and Russia. After looking at the map provided by aircooled, it's obvious that there is something messed up with their languages. I have never seen such long names ever and I thought that Spanish, French, and Italian had too many letters in their words. English has to be the simplest language to spit out (other than all of the French words inserted from the times that they had conquered the Brits). Ever notice how much longer sentences are in every other language on bilingual instructions and ingredients?

The recently retired commander of our ND National Guard was Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk who I think is of Ukrainian descent. Who has 13 letters in their last name? It takes me at least 5 tries to pronounce his name although you only pronounce about half of the letters. And only one vowel? 

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

A lot of that is that while English might have five different ways to pronounce "c" and three different ways to spell each one of those, these languages have much more uniform spelling.

A pieces-falling-into-the-cracks moment was when I realized that the "hard S" sound is spelled "sz" in a lot of languages, German has a letter ß that literally translates to "s z"...

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

I think the real issue is the bureaucracy of war within our own and the NATO systems. All involved are happy to invest in war. All involved are happy to say they support Ukraine. Even to the point of essentially fighting the war behind the scenes. So why not take a stand and fight beside the Ukrainians?

Politicians are walking the same titerope they did in Vietnam.   If we go after Russia, then China and North Korea  will come after us and in no time at all we will be throwing Nuclear weapons around.  
   No one wins with Nuclear weapons. 

02Pilot said:

In reply to Apexcarver :

Cynical, but not original. Check out Merchants of Death by Engelbrecht and Hanighen (1934). This mindset led directly to the US Neutrality Acts that limited our ability to assist Britain in the early days of WW2.

O2 Pilot. 
  The main force behind the US Neutrality act was Henry Ford and  Charles Lindbergh  who agreed with Hitler and started the America first movement.  

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

I think the real issue is the bureaucracy of war within our own and the NATO systems. All involved are happy to invest in war. All involved are happy to say they support Ukraine. Even to the point of essentially fighting the war behind the scenes. So why not take a stand and fight beside the Ukrainians?

It's the tite rope.  No one wants to provoke Putin enough to make him think dropping nukes is what he should do next. 
  Although the cynical me wonders how many would actually work with the decades of neglect they've experienced. 

Another cynical me bets the extremist Muslims would be willing to clean up the battlefield afterwards. 

frenchyd said:

It's the tite rope.  No one wants to provoke Putin enough to make him think dropping nukes is what he should do next. 
  Although the cynical me wonders how many would actually work with the decades of neglect they've experienced. 

I've thought about that as well. At least we still check whether our floppy disk launch codes still work.

In reply to frenchyd :

I'm sure enough would work to truly make a mess of the planet. 

j_tso said:

frenchyd said:

It's the tite rope.  No one wants to provoke Putin enough to make him think dropping nukes is what he should do next. 
  Although the cynical me wonders how many would actually work with the decades of neglect they've experienced. 

I've thought about that as well. At least we still check whether our floppy disk launch codes still work.

Since reading "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" and learning how many publicly known nuclear weapons accidents have occurred with the US, I've wondered how with the number of nuclear armed nations with (often) fewer safeguards than the US, the world has not already become a nuclear wasteland.

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

Some of it might be "optics" to use that word again... The number of nations "known" to have nuclear weapons may not be the same as nations having "operational" nuclear weapons.  For many of the smaller nations, just the notion they "have" them is considered enough of a deterrent, regardless of whether or not they have the military means to actually deploy them.  Threatening someone to use a nuke is not something sane people are willing to "test" just to see if the nation can actually do it. 

It is somewhat concerning that with how much Russia spends on its military (est. at around $70B/year), how much of that is actually going towards the maintenance and security of their nuclear arsenal.  As mentioned early in this thread, not having (or wanting to spend) the money to maintain them was one of the reasons Ukraine was willing to give up the nukes they had from the Soviet era.