The war in Ukraine

[SW1]

[bobp]

The Russian ship struck last week is now in drydock...

[Phil Sayers]

Contrasting styles - today Ukraine has gone after Russia's strategic bomber fleet and, judging from the smoke and a Russian MoD acknowledgement that aircraft were hit, done some pretty serious damage to it:



Russia has fired a ballistic missile at a theatre in a Ukrainian city, killing and wounding multiple civilians while wrecking a historical building:

[Phil Sayers]

[albedo]

That's a bizarrely pessimistic piece and doesn't accord with what most other informed commentators are saying. The expectation among the more serious voices always seemed to be that progress on the southern front-line was going to be slow and painstaking because of the sheer amount of mine-laying and general defensive preparations that the Russians had time to do (probably unparalleled in the whole history of warfare), coupled with a relative lack of air power on the Ukrainian side.

This initial phase (less than 3 months into the counter-offensive remember) is one of seeking to destroy as much of the Russian materiel as possible and forcing them to use their reserves. As far as it's possible to tell, this strategy seems to be proving successful. The Russian power to resist is being weakened every day. Sometime in the next 2-3 months it seems likely that a more decisive break towards Mariupol will happen, hopefully into territory less heavily mined and defended, but exactly where and when will depend on where the Russian defences prove to be most vulnerable.

[Caribbean]

Food for thought
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/statu ... 0938039356

[NickC]

UK funding £90+ million to boost Ukraine Anti-Drone defences, £56 million is for the Kongsberg CORTEX Typhon Remote Weapon Station fitted with the Northrop Grumman M230 LF 30mm low recoil single barrel cannon (a more capable variant of that fitted to Apache with longer barrel) and a Teledyne FLIR.

https://www.defense-aerospace.com/uk-to ... on-orders/

[albedo]

Just wondering which sources of information on the Ukraine war that people here find most credible?

The source that I like most for daily updates are the YouTube videos from ATP Geopolitics (Jonathan Pearce) like this first one from today:



How he manages regularly to put out 3 or 4 videos a day, I don't know. Some days, there is just too much content in these videos to take in comfortably. JP is certainly sympathetic to Ukraine but also genuinely strives hard I believe to be as objective as possible.

There is a huge amount of other frequent videos on YT, but so many of them hype their content excessively or are so selective in their reporting or are unduly optimistic or pessimistic as to be not worth following routinely (and I'm excluding the blatantly pro-Russian ones like Scott Ritter, which are just comedy shows).

But there are some other well-informed commentators like Andrew Perpetua, Ben Hodges, Mick Ryan, Perun etc, sometimes in their own channels but for some in interviews by more general channels. Here's a Ben Hodges example of the latter posted yesterday, for example:

[Phil Sayers]

The following Twitter accounts are all excellent sources of information:

https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ?ref_src=t ... r%5Eauthor

https://twitter.com/NOELreports?ref_src ... r%5Eauthor

https://twitter.com/markito0171?lang=en

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love?ref ... r%5Eauthor

https://twitter.com/Tendar?ref_src=twsr ... r%5Eauthor

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK?ref_src= ... r%5Eauthor

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons?ref_src=t ... r%5Eauthor

https://twitter.com/RALee85?ref_src=tws ... r%5Eauthor

[Phil Sayers]

Oh dear - what a shame!



"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them.“ — Arthur Travers Harris

[mrclark303]

Oh dear - what a shame!



"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them.“ — Arthur Travers Harris

Absolutely tip top, I assume Storm Shadow dropped the hammer

I just love the way the much feared S400 can't see the moderately stealthy S400, the Storm Shadow seems to be able to ramble at will.....

[albedo]

Absolutely tip top, I assume Storm Shadow dropped the hammer

Early reports are saying Harpoon or Neptune, presumably modified versions to hit land-based targets. Maybe some more definitive info will emerge. Storm Shadow use does seem to have tapered off recently for whatever reason.

[Phil Sayers]

However, it may not be a coincidence that this was posted - Cleverly done some might say....



What has tickled me is that the S400 not only could not track or engage whatever weapon destroyed much of the system, but also could not track or destroy the drone that Ukraine sent to film it.

[bobp]

Looks like the Wagner leadership have been removed and bodies more or less cremated in the fire. Beats falling out of a window I guess.

[Ian Hall]

[Ian Hall]

[albedo]

I'm really not sure what these international aid comparisons are meant to show for two reasons:

1. How do you arrive at an honest figure for a country's contribution? It really makes no sense to use the original production cost (sometimes inflation-corrected) for equipment manufactured years ago and now largely a sunk cost. Such equipment has often been in deep reserve, unlikely ever to be called on again and saving the donor country the eventual cost of scrapping. Of course it varies with the nature of the aid and the age of the equipment but using the original equipment cost is often just plain misleading.

2. It's scarcely surprising that the country with the biggest budget and stockpile (ie the US) is also the largest contributor in absolute nominal terms. But if you view in terms of the GDP 'sacrifice' that each country has made then the US is substantially down the list, with the Baltic countries way out ahead at 1+% of GDP. See eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/130 ... donor-gdp/

[wargame_insomniac]

I'm really not sure what these international aid comparisons are meant to show for two reasons:

1. How do you arrive at an honest figure for a country's contribution? It really makes no sense to use the original production cost (sometimes inflation-corrected) for equipment manufactured years ago and now largely a sunk cost. Such equipment has often been in deep reserve, unlikely ever to be called on again and saving the donor country the eventual cost of scrapping. Of course it varies with the nature of the aid and the age of the equipment but using the original equipment cost is often just plain misleading.

2. It's scarcely surprising that the country with the biggest budget and stockpile (ie the US) is also the largest contributor in absolute nominal terms. But if you view in terms of the GDP 'sacrifice' that each country has made then the US is substantially down the list, with the Baltic countries way out ahead at 1+% of GDP. See eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/130 ... donor-gdp/

Yes - shows how generous Piland and the Baltic States are in aid as % GDP.

Interesting to see the contributions made by 3 of the big 4 West European Nation: France, Italy and Spain.

Hint - you will have to expand the search window downwards where they are in a clump from 0.07% GDP - 0.05% GDP.
It shows their priorities.....

[Ian Hall]

[Ian Hall]

[albedo]

Well-argued strategic analysis of the future of the Ukraine war:

[Ian Hall]

[Phil Sayers]

Long and detailed analysis of the current state of Ukraine's offensive:

https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/perse ... ee-months/

[Ian Hall]

Worth reading

[Ian Hall]

How on Earth did Secretary of State Blinken manage to find a Fleet Air Arm themed McDonald's