Let’s start tonight with President Zelenskyy’s video address he made earlier this evening in Kyiv. It has English subtitles.
Zelensky speaks of the strength and endurance of Ukrainians in latest late night address but also that Russia is “moving away from areas where we are beating them to focus on others that are very important. On those where it can be difficult for us.” pic.twitter.com/OmOWZvwSYf
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 31, 2022
The Ukrainian Air Force would like your attention for a few minutes. @KpsZSU is the twitter account name for the Ukrainian Air Force, so when you see @KpsZSU in the copied and pasted tweets read it as Ukrainian Air Force.
⚡The Ukrainian Air Force would like to address misinformation published in multiple Western media outlets regarding the situation in the ?? sky and support from our @NATO allies.
More in ?(1/16)#ProtectUАSky #StopRussia #UkraineUnderAttaсk— Ukrainian Air Force (@KpsZSU) March 31, 2022
- As we defend our country against Russian aggression, information is one of the most powerful weapons at our disposal. We ask journalists from all nations to take care to avoid supporting the Russian army by spreading inaccurate information. (2/16)
- Myth: Ukraine’s successes on the ground will win the war. Truth: Air superiority is the deciding factor in this war. Air superiority has played a key role in all wars since WWII. (3/16)
- Dominance in the air allows a combatant to quickly and effectively attack the enemy’s ground troops, supply chains, and other essential military objects. Air superiority also provides powerful protection for one’s own ground and naval forces. (4/16)
- Myth: Ukraine’s air force is equipped to effectively defend the country against Russia. Truth: Russia’s air force is many times larger than Ukraine’s and has access to more advanced radar and missile technologies. (5/16)
- Ukraine’s air force cannot close the sky over Ukraine or gain air superiority due to a large discrepancy in equipment and technologies. (6/16)
- Due to this major imbalance between the Russians and Ukrainian air forces, @KpsZSU has been urgently requesting more modern fighter jets and air defense tools from its allies since the outset of the war. (7/16)
- Over the past month, our air force has sustained losses; as equipment is destroyed by Russian forces or damaged in action, our need only grows more urgent. (8/16)
- Myth: Stingers will make up for the @KpsZSU equipment shortfalls. Truth: Successful defense against Russian threats in the air (including cruise missiles, among others) requires fighter jets as well as medium- and long-range surface-based air defense systems. (9/16)
- Stingers have a limited range and functionality; cannot compensate for a lack of modern fighter jets and medium- and long-range missile defense systems. Kamikaze drones are designed to destroy targets on the ground and also cannot defend against Russian aircraft and missiles. (10/16)
- Myth: The US and @NATO are providing #Ukraine with needed weapons. Allies are doing everything possible, short of direct involvement in the war. Truth: To date, our allies have not answered our call for air defense support (fighter jets and SAM). (11/16)
- We have not received the tools we need to defend our sky and achieve victory. In the sky, the greatest need is for fighter jets – F-15s and F-16s of the fourth generation or higher would be sufficient; Ukrainian pilots can learn to fly these with just 2-3 weeks of training. (12/16)
- Unlike Soviet-era MiG-29s, these jets are equipped with the advanced technologies used by the enemy, including advanced radars and modern missiles. On the ground, air defense systems can prevent airstrikes and missile strikes. (13/16)
- Russia has fired well over 1,000 ballistic and cruise missiles and dropped hundreds of tons of unguided bombs over the cities and towns of Ukraine. Most could have been intercepted if Ukrainian territory were covered by the required number of efficient air defense systems. (14/16)
- Ukraine currently operates long-range S-300 (SA-10) missile systems and medium-range BUK-M1 missile systems. However, these are outdated, Soviet-era systems that are no match for Russian systems, such as the S-400 and others. (15/16)
- To effectively protect Ukraine, the optimal solution would be Patriot systems from the United States or the cheaper, more mobile NASAMS systems from Norway. In addition, Ukraine could also use more Soviet-era S-300 and BUK-M1 systems, which are also currently effective against the enemy. (16/16)
To me the most interesting part of this thread is tweet #12, which states that Ukrainian pilots could get up to speed on F-15s and F-16s with only two or three weeks of training.
Much more after the jump.
As we’ve been discussing for several days now, the Ukrainian negotiating position that they would need the US, the UK, France, Germany, and Turkey to establish binding guarantees of Ukraine’s security were a non-starter. Yesterday I noted that Britain rejected the idea and Germany said something in diplospeak that sounded nice, but clearly wasn’t a yes. What I missed because I hadn’t seen it reported anywhere was that the US has also rejected the idea. That announcement came at yesterday’s White House press briefing.
Q Thank you, Kate. Earlier today, Germany said it is willing to act as a security guarantor for Ukraine as part of the peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Is the U.S. willing to become a guarantor of Ukraine’s security or considering that option?
MS. BEDINGFIELD: So we are in constant discussion with Ukrainians about ways that we can help ensure that they are sovereign and secure. But there’s nothing specific about a security guarantee that I can speak to at this time.
My assessment is still that President Zelenskyy and his team know that the Russians are not negotiating in good faith. That the Russian demands are unreasonable and can and will shift on a dime. That it is a stalling tactic as Russia is weaponizing its diplomatic power to look like it is doing the right thing. As a result, the Ukrainians are going along to also look like they’re doing the right thing, but that nothing they’re proposing is really serious because they know it would be unacceptable to actual Ukrainians, the Russians will never agree to it, and/or it makes no actual strategic sense.
Here’s today’s British Ministry of Defense’s assessment:
Here’s the DOD’s background briefing for today:
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Okay, good morning, everybody. We’ll get started.
Not a whole lot of updates today from yesterday. Day 36, we continue to observe some Russian forces begin to continue to observe them repositioning away from Kyiv, particularly from the north and northwest of Kyiv. I don’t have an update on quantity. We haven’t observed that much of a difference over the last 24 hours, so I’d still roughly leave it at about 20 percent or so. There hasn’t been and so it hasn’t been sort of, you know, wholesale movement, at least not at this point.
I would say that again, despite the rhetoric of de-escalations, we’re still observing artillery fire and airstrikes in and around Kyiv. They’re still fighting to the north of Kyiv. As these forces begin to repositioning, the Ukrainians are moving against them. Still fighting around Chernihiv, and again, we believe that the Ukrainians still have lines of communication there in Chernihiv.
Obviously, and again, you guys know this – while Russian forces haven’t made any major gains, there’s fighting that continues in southern and eastern Ukraine, and that includes Kharkiv, Mariupol and Mykolaiv. We do continue to observe some Russian forces inside Mariupol, but obviously, the Ukrainians are fighting very, very tough inside the city.
The airspace remains contested; again, no changes to that. We’ve observed now no big, major muscle-movement changes in the missile launches; still observe more than 1,400 as of today. There’s nothing new in the maritime environment to speak to.
On Mykolaiv, no really major change to the battlespace around Mykolaiv. We still assess that the Ukrainians are still fighting for Kherson and the degree to which the Russians are sort of positioned, it’s sort of in between Kherson and Mykolaiv.
We have seen the Russians continue to increase their number of sorties, aircraft sorties, in last 24 hours, up over 300. And their strikes are focused on Kyiv, Chernihiv, Izyum, which we’ve talked about before, to the south of Kharkiv, and then that joint force operation area, basically, the Donbas.
Those are sort of the four areas where they’re conducting most of their strikes. So again, for all the talk of de-escalation and moving away, Kyiv is still very much under threat from airstrikes.
And think I’ll leave it at that. Again, not a whole lot of change from yesterday.
Bob?
Q: Thank you. I actually was a little bit unclear on your use of the 20 percent number. Are you referring to, in other words, 20 percent of what? Are you talking about forces that include not just those to the north and northwest of Kyiv, but also the Chernihiv area? And you also mentioned Sumy yesterday. I’m wondering what the ,you know, sort of the geographic area that is 20 percent of what, kind of thing?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah, I was referring to the forces that they had arrayed against Kyiv specifically.
Q: Well, so do you consider that to include those in the northeast coming through Chernihiv?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: No, I was counting — I was just talking about Kyiv, because that was the big, that was the big muscle movement. That’s what the Russians announced, was they were going to leave Kyiv alone. You know, we’ve seen some minor movements in other, in other places to the…around the northern part of the country, but largely it’s — it’s around Kyiv that we’re starting to see this repositioning. And so the I said it was less than 20 percent, that it was a rough estimate. We don’t have a perfect count, and what I was referring to was the force that Putin had arrayed against Kyiv. I wasn’t counting other places because frankly, we just haven’t seen that much coming out of other place.
Q: Okay. The other quick question on the same topic was when you made your introductory remarks, you said that the Ukrainians are moving against them. Now, are you referring to those forces that are repositioning, or just in general in the north of Kyiv?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, I mean, I guess it’s a good question. It’s both, but what I was referring to was — was that they are attacking some of the repositioning forces, that they’re moving against them as they begin to reposition. But they have consistently been going on the offensive around Kyiv even before the Russians made decisions to start to reposition, even when they were just in defensive positions and sort of stalled and not moving forward, the Ukrainians were working against them. So it’s a little bit of both, but I was specifically referring to them pressing their attacks against some of these units that are repositioning.
Q: All right.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Okay, Howard Altman?
Q: Thank you. A couple of questions. The Ukrainians say they’re concerned about Chernobyl’s a number of things. One is the presence of a great deal of ammunition there that they are concerned about that could accidentally explode, the presence of rocket systems there that could be used to attack from there. And then if the Russians withdraw, their concern about a Russian missile strike on the facility. Does the Pentagon share any of those concerns? And can you confirm the presence of (continued ?) presence of Russian troops and those rocket systems there?
And then my second question is, can you talk about the — the explosion at the Belgrade Russian facility – ammunition facility and whether that was a strike by Ukraine? Thanks.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: On the first question, you know, obviously, since the Russians moved into Chernobyl we said very clearly that we were concerned about their occupation of that defunct nuclear facility and our concerns over their lack of understanding or adherence to any kind of safety protocols. So that’s a long-standing concern.
I don’t have the level of detail you’re getting from the Ukrainians on rockets being left there, or how many Russians are there. We have seen them begin to reposition away from Chernobyl, but I couldn’t give you a nose count of how many are still there or what they might have left. So I can’t help you on that.
And on the Belgorad strike, the farthest I’m willing to go on that is, you know, we — we can’t — we can’t confirm exactly what happened there, what kind of munition was used or — or exactly from where it came. But we’re not in a position to refute the possibility that it could have come from the Ukrainian side. We just don’t have a whole lot more that we can say about it.
Tom Bowman?
Q: Yeah, any updates on Russian replacement troops heading in from Georgia, presumably to the Donbas?
And also, I was wondering if you can say anything more about Putin being misinformed or receiving little information from his generals?
Do you see him removing commanders, firing generals?
And also, it there a sense what the implications of this might be?
If he’s not getting the right information and maybe he’s suddenly realizing how bad things are, he could lash out even more. Is there any talk about that?
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, on your first question I don’t have any updates on reinforcements.
On the second question, we haven’t seen any tangible outcomes, based on our assessment, that Mr. Putin is being misinformed or is perhaps uninformed. So you know, no dots we can connect there that correlate to decisions that the Russians have made, or he has made, on the battlefield — other than — I mean, again, it doesn’t really answer the question, but, I mean, clearly, this repositioning that they’re doing around Kyiv and — and other places in the north, and this re-prioritization on the Donbas, clearly indicate that they know they have failed to take the capital city, that they know they have been under increased pressure elsewhere around the country. Because they are obviously making decisions to alter their goals and objectives.
Now, whether that itself is an outcome of Mr. Putin all of a sudden getting informed, we don’t know. So I can’t point to a specific decision point or a specific action that the Russians are taking and tell you that that’s evidence that, you know, Mr. Putin is now more informed than he was before.
And as I said — as the Pentagon briefer said yesterday, I mean, clearly, it’s cause for concern if he’s not being told the truth, if he’s not — if he’s being misinformed, I think, the gist of your question, because you don’t know how he’s going to react when he — when he does get fully informed. And you don’t know how that’s going to affect their legitimate, to the degree they could be legitimate, their negotiating tactics at the table.
So, yes, we’re concerned about the — the reports that he may not have the full information.
The rest of the Q&A at the link.
Here’s NATO Secretary General Jans Stoltenberg’s assessment:
⚡️ Stoltenberg: Russia repositioning to eastern Donbas region, not withdrawing.
NATO secretary told reporters in Brussels that "Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas region" and "Russia has repeatedly lied about its intentions."
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 31, 2022
Kharkiv:
Humanitarian aid is loaded into mommobiles. Every morning volunteers deliver help to mothers with children who stay in Kharkiv. Ukraine is united like never before ?? pic.twitter.com/gzbQO4FosS
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 31, 2022
Mariupol:
"Where is my dad?" Dima, a young Ukrainian boy, cries from his hospital bed as he asks for his father, who, like Dima, was injured in Mariupol. His father is being treated in another part of the hospital. pic.twitter.com/ZawwfPtVe4
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 30, 2022
RT shared video how the russian tank is targeting and firing at the residential houses in #Mariupol. They record their #warcrimes #SaveMariupol pic.twitter.com/RnBp5cnY4G
— Olena Halushka (@OlenaHalushka) March 31, 2022
Irpin:
From Ukrayinska Pravda:
Roman Petrenko – Wednesday, 30 March 2022, 16:19
Oleksandr Markushyn, the Mayor of Irpin, has reported that up to 300 civilians and 50 military personnel have been killed in Irpin, according to preliminary information.
According to Markushyn: “They [the Russian troops] simply shot the people that they didn’t like.
I will say this – maybe some people won’t like this, but it is true. They crushed the bodies of Ukrainians who had been killed, just flattened them into the asphalt. It was frightening to watch…
Unfortunately, 16 guys from our territorial defence died, 29 have been hospitalised. As for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, up to 50 people were killed and nearly 100 wounded.”
Details: Markushyn said that it is still impossible to determine the exact number of civilians who have been killed and added that during the periods of heavy fighting, people were being buried in courtyards and parks. Markushyn believes that up to 300 civilians were killed.
The Mayor also said that the local residents who were hiding in basements [during the Russian occupation of Irpin] told him that not only were some of them stripped naked there, but also that there have been instances of [sexual] assault on women.
Markushyn also said that the occupying troops separated the men from the women for prisoner exchange.
Trostyanets:
Trostyanets, Sumy region, #Ukraine. The city was occupied by the Russians, Ukrainian forces kicked them out 5 days ago. That's how the city looks today. Per local officials, a large part of Trostyanets is mined, including even the cemetery.
? @mefimus pic.twitter.com/TPLd5Lm6JV
— Ostap Yarysh (@OstapYarysh) March 31, 2022
This is a very interesting explanation with maps and diagrams of how one individual doing open source geospatial intelligence was able to map the Russian artillery targeting of Mariupol based on another open source having been able to record the unencrypted communications between the Russian commander calling for the fires and the artillerist entering the grid coordinates.
“For all targets: Moscow time is 14:00”
Unencrypted Russian military radio transmissions reveal an artillery strike in Mariupol
Over a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, billions of people around the world know of Vladimir Putin’s aggressive and bloodthirsty move against his country’s neighbor. What may have gone unnoticed, however, is the incredibly shoddy state of Russian equipment. In particular, their communication systems.
It’s no surprise that strong communications are necessary to fighting and winning a war. Calling in reinforcements, evacuating casualties, maneuvering units, and virtually anything else soldiers need to do rely heavily on secure, fast, and interconnected communications systems.
However, the corrupt and kleptocratic Russian military has robbed their soldiers of even the most basic radios, forcing junior officers to procure off-the-shelf civilian models for use in combat.
Problem is, unencrypted traffic on Russian military frequencies can be picked up and heard by regular people operating what’s known as SDRs — software defined radios. These allow users from all over the world to tune into essentially a website and listen to radio frequencies of all types, from the BBC to music to pirate radio stations to, as we’ll see today, Russian artillery units.
“In five minutes, be ready to work on all fronts” “Understood”
@xateond is one of the folks who has been listening to and translating Russian military frequencies since the start of the war1. On March 3, they noticed, transcribed, and posted to Twitter a conversation between two Russian soldiers, with call signs Volk and Consul.
Based on the exchange, Consul appears to be a high-ish ranking officer, with the authority to order artillery strikes across a wide front. Volk, on the other hand, is either a battery commander or an artillery spotter responsible for delegating and correcting fire.
Their conversation essentially consists of two parts. The first part — late at night on March 3 — is real time, with Consul ordering batteries to fire at unidentified targets and Volk reporting the results in real time. The second part is Consul’s meticulous orders for an enormous artillery barrage the next day. He tells all batteries to be ready to fire at “14:00 Moscow time” on March 4 with what appears to be the coordinates for at least 27 different targets2.
My curiosity piqued, I transcribed the 27 coordinate sets recorded by @xateond into a grid, with the coordinates rounded to the nearest whole number and placed in their correct positions on X and Y axes. So, for instance, the numbers in the tweet above would get a mark in the box at the intersection of 82 (on the X axis) and 37 (on the Y axis).
The coordinates (if that’s indeed what they are) have a loosely diagonal orientation, from the southwest to the northeast. To confirm my theory that these 27 numerical combinations were coordinates, I turned to an unusual source: old Soviet maps.
I noticed these Soviet maps had similar numbers running along their X and Y axes. I spoke with John Davies of sovietmaps.com, who confirmed that the axes numbers on these maps are “Gauss-Kruger values”, which show how far a point on a map is from the equator and a reference meridian.
One map of Mariupol, then called Zhdanov, caught my eye because the axis numbers in the grid above and the numbers in a section of the map seemed to match up particularly well.
Much, much, much more at the links. Including all the maps and diagrams and targeting tables! Make sure to stay around to see Omnes’s take in the comments.
The Russians are claiming to have destroyed all 36 of Ukraine’s bayraktar TB2 drones. This would be quite a feet as Ukraine only took possession of a dozen of them before the war started and they’re still waiting for the rest to arrive. We do have confirmation that a couple have been shot down, but not all 12 and certainly not an additional 24 that Ukraine never had.
Speaking of Russian disinformation and agitprop, Trump asked and Putin delivered. What he delivered is just complete bullshit, but he did deliver.
What's far more concerning is that this comes after President Trump directly called on Putin to release "dirt" on Hunter Bidenhttps://t.co/2p79jr2mFV
— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) March 31, 2022
Unfortunately this will be catnip to the Fox News et al crowd! And because the political reporters in the US have decided that despite debunking the Hunter Biden laptop-harddrive story and explaining why there are too many holes in the various parts of the story and the chain of custody of the laptop and/or hard drive to have any confidence in any of the material, they’re going to keep pushing that story until it becomes 2022’s, 2023’s, and 2024’s her emails.
This Tynan guy gets it!
This is my favorite part pic.twitter.com/TEz68ej88p
— ☕️ Tynan ? (@TynanPants) March 30, 2022
Speaking of Russian cyber operations, the Russians have completely infiltrated Hungary’s Foreign Ministry’s systems. Starting in August 2012. And they had access through January 2022, including access to classified NATO material.
On December 30, 2021, in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pinned the Order of Friendship on the suit of his Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó. Although the medal was presented by Lavrov, it was Russian President Vladimir Putin himself who decided to award it. Not coincidentally, the medal, which is in the form of a wreath of olive branches encircling a globe, includes the inscription “Peace and Friendship” in Cyrillic on the back, is the highest Russian state decoration that can be awarded to a foreigner.
Péter Szijjártó knew long ago that Russia’s intelligence services had attacked and hacked into the IT systems of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFA), which he headed. By the second half of 2021, it had become clear that the Russians had completely compromised the foreign ministry’s computer network and internal correspondence. Furthermore, they had also hacked into the encrypted network used to transmit “restricted” and “confidential” state secrets and diplomatic information, which can only be used under strict security measures.
According to an internal document we obtained, the foreign ministry was still under targeted attacks in January 2022. Details of the Russian hacking of the foreign ministry’s communications channels were shared with us by former state officials, among others, who learned of the incident from officials with direct knowledge of it.
According to former intelligence officials, the cyber attack trail suggests that hacker groups working for Russian intelligence are clearly behind the operations against Hungary’s foreign ministry. These hackers work for the Federal Security Service, FSB, which was previously headed by Putin, and for the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU. According to our sources, these hacker groups have been well known to the Hungarian state authorities for a long time, as they have been continuously attacking Hungarian government networks for at least a decade. Russian attacks against Hungary are most often related to hacks against other NATO countries, and members of the Western alliance regularly cooperate and share information to identify these offensive cyber operations.
Hungarian diplomacy has become practically an open book for Moscow through the hacking of the ministry’s networks. Russians are able to know in advance what the Hungarian foreign ministry is thinking and planning, and this is happening at a very sensitive time. Russian infiltration remained active before and partly after the invasion of Ukraine, during the current EU and NATO crisis summits. Meanwhile, there is no sign that the Hungarian government has publicly protested to Russia about the cyberespionage.
Direkt36 uncovered the Russian intelligence operations against the Hungarian foreign ministry and the inadequacy of Hungarian counter-intelligence measures, going back at least a decade, with the help of foreign ministry documents and more than thirty background interviews. For example, we spoke to former Hungarian intelligence and security officers who had worked on Russian intelligence-related fields and had concrete information on many of the cases described in this article. Sources familiar with the internal affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade shared information about the ministry’s handling of the cyberattack.
Much, much, much more at the link!
We’ll finish with this!
Hello from the pinkest place ever…here in Kyiv a pastry shop now cooking meals for the people of Ukraine! This team didn’t even know each other 30 days ago & now are true @WCKitchen Food Fighters ? I can’t wait to come back on vacation when there is peace! #ChefsForUkraine ?? pic.twitter.com/0DgnFnWgc4
— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) March 31, 2022
Open thread!
Boots On the Ground Fundraising: Protect Michigan!
Fair Economist
Jose Andres is just amazing.
CCL
Once again, thank you, Adam.
Ohio Mom
Thanks Adam for all your work. I’m too tired to take this all in, it’s on my list for tomorrow.
I still don’t see how this ends happily. Would be happy to be wrong, as they say.
Nettoyeur
I think the US and allied will have to bite the bullet and figure out ways to send planes and missles to Ukraine, and also find a way to break the Russian Black Sea blockade. If we don’t, the Russian war on Ukraine could well become, like the Spanish Civil War, a dress rehearsal for a fascist takeover of Europe, by Russia this time. Putin doesn’t care about diplomacy agreements treaties, to say nothing of human costs, so trying to negotiate or avoid this or that red line is pointless. Raw force is the only mechanism of persuasion. Looks more and more like WWIII is already on.
Mathguy
How is it that Jose Andres has not won the Nobel Peace Prize?
West of the Rockies
Who is issuing targeting orders for Russian tanks? Are those just standard Russian soldiers (the conscripted soldiers I would like to have empathy for) firing at random homes of citizens, or do orders come from elsewhere, from so-called officers and professional soldiers?
Russia is making it harder for me to feel sympathy for its soldiers.
Maybe more Bayraktar vids would help remind us that the war is more than distraught Ukrainian children in hospitals crying for their parents and Russian soldiers randomly terrorizing non-combatants.
dimmsdale
Thanks again, Adam. I especially appreciate your posting Tweets, because a lot of them are terrific follows that I wouldn’t know about otherwise. As to the rest, it’s all beyond my expertise, but I’m grateful to all the commenters here with specialized knowledge and experience, because your collective expertise adds a great deal to my understanding.
YY_Sima Qian
I think the Ukrainian Air Force is awfully optimistic that their pilots can effectively use F-16s & F-15s after only 2 – 3 weeks of training. Basic maneuvers, yes, but effective air combat against Russian Air Force & effective ground strikes in face of Russian air defenses? They would be better off w/ Mig-29s, though the plane’s short legs will limit their impact, especially in the east.
Unless they get volunteer pilots along w/ the F-15s/16s…
debbie
Who knew Russia had such beautiful graphics programs? I bet those cartoon balloons with words inside them took thousands of man hours to code.
More importantly,
I know squat about training, but could this even be possible?
Aussie sheila
I neglected to post my thanks to OO and Ruckus for their righteous posts yesterday on the topic of treatment of soldiers in war.
I know nothing at all about military strategy, but am clear about the hellacious future that awaits us all if we abandon existing rules of combat that are enshrined in international law.
I have had it up to my neck with bloodthirsty posts from keyboard warriors about what should be done to and with other people, especially those who blithely waive away risks of nuclear war. There is something extra sick and depressing about people shielded from the current horrors wishing more on the world.
Reading OO and Ruckus on this topic is welcome sanity and decency.
Thank you.
Adam L Silverman
@YY_Sima Qian: That’s pretty much my take, but aviation is not my specialty.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: It’s not my area of expertise, but i would not be surprised of good pilots could adjust to the new planes in that amount of time, but becoming experts with them would take longer. The question is, with those planes, how good do they have to be to be good enough?
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: My understanding is no it can’t. But I also know very little about aviation.
eclare
Sort of OT, but he was involved in the Zelenskyy extortion…Colbert ragged CBS, his network, for hiring Mick Mulvaney as an analyst tonight.
kalakal
@debbie: I would think it would be a lot longer than 2-3 weeks. However there may be a way open to shed some light. I no longer grace the halls of academe but any jackal who is at an institution with a JSTOR sub can find an article from INFORMS on optimizing the Norwegian Air Forces transition from F16s to F35s which should give a more informed answer
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45154182
VeniceRiley
Crypto donations to IA now exceed 100 million. Can’t that buy some old and lightly used migs from randomstans or whatever?
My main non-nuke concern is the 400 or so leased aircraft Russia seized. CNt they be 9/11ed into UA? Does Russia do suicide pilots? Speaking of pilots, if we know their names then we can send to their crypto wallets to land and “be shot down” I just know we will not hear any of this but I hope it is happening.
sanjeevs
Good article on the occupation of Trostyanets.
Liberated from the Russians: A Visit to Trostyanets After the End of the Occupation – DER SPIEGEL
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: I agree. The basic metric of pilot quality is training time. In unfamiliar planes, with unfamiliar flight characteristics, avionics, weapons systems, the lot — three weeks is like throwing those planes away, in my opinion. Much better to give them the modified MIG-29s, those I could believe they could master in a short time.
VeniceRiley
Belford oil storage in RU on fire.
Flight system shouting GO TO PAPER like a clinic when the EMR goes down.
Get these amazing people some advanced MAD and PLANES.
ETA, BELFORD? Thanks autocorrect. I am leaving it but it’s Belgorod I think.
sanjeevs
@Adam L Silverman: This is OT, but do you think may have been Richard Dearlove that turned Flynn?
Seems it was Dearlove who set up the meeting between Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova at a security conference. 24 days later Flynn was fired for not reporting the contact with her.
If this was innocent on Dearlove’s part, why did he invite Lokhova to a security conference. Ostensibly, she was a banker.
A Russian honeytrap for Gen Flynn? Not me… – BBC News
£3m sex discrimination case winner: ‘Everybody loses’ – BBC News
Dearlove always seemed weird as he kept arguing for the hardest Brexit and the least possible cooperation with EU ( ie NATO partners)
Ex-MI6 and defence chiefs warn Tory MPs to vote down Brexit deal that ‘threatens national security’ | Politics News | Sky News
Leto
@YY_Sima Qian: was coming here to say that; 2-3 weeks is enough for a very basic familiarization of ops.
@debbie: short answer: no. It’s not a discredit to their pilots, it’s more of the fact that in the middle of a dogfight/close air support mission (which would inevitably lead into surface to air missile range), you need to know where every switch/toggle/sub menu is by memory. 2-3 weeks isn’t enough time to get up to combat speed. On top of the fact that the aircraft flight characteristics are different. Again, longer term training will get you familiar with that; not in the middle of combat.
@kalakal: difference with this is you’re still coming from similar platforms. While the electronics of the F35 are more advanced, the entire software package is similar in operation. Essentially the UIs. F16/F18 pilots transitioning over to the F35 can do it much quicker because they’re already operating a familiar system.
Calouste
Today Putin tried to get other countries to pay in Rubles for Russian gas, otherwise the threat of cutting off supply if the didn’t, and Germany said “Russian gas supplier, go fuck yourself”, we’ll pay in what the contract says.
Multiple problems there for Putin IMO. First, a bully can’t have too many people ignoring its threats and calling its bluff, because pretty soon everyone is going to do that. Second, everyone is preparing for Russia to make threats and act in bad faith (Germany has started to activate emergency plans for gas supply), so future threats will be less effective anyway.
James E Powell
@Carlo Graziani:
How many of those planes are available to Ukraine?
Adam L Silverman
@sanjeevs: I don’t know.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: I was hoping you’d make an appearance to clarify this. Thanks!
Carlo Graziani
@kalakal: The article uses a figure of 2 years of training for a trained F-16 pilot to become a trained F-35 pilot.
Leto
@James E Powell: Honestly I’m not sure how many Poland were talking about giving them. The thing with all of this that worries me is the supply system and how robust that is to support the planes. Jets require a good bit of maintenance, even more so during combat operations. While it would def be a good thing for them to have them, again it comes back to: how long will they be able to operate them? Do they have the ability to get the parts they need, where they’re needed, to keep the planes in the air? Especially in potentially contested areas, or areas that are under fire.
sdhays
Apparently Georgia is joining the sanctions regime against Russia. So there’s already a cost to Putin pulling those troops out of occupied-Georgia. They’re a lot more exposed to violent retaliation than most of the other countries participating, so I hope they know what they’re doing.
Carlo Graziani
@James E Powell: Poland was offering 28 of them when this thing turned into a diplomatic fiasco last month. At the time, the last word from Washington was that the UKR Air Force was not flying the Jets that it had. That seemed to end the matter. Later the story seemed to change, so that it now appears that they are flying and effectively challenging the Russian Air force (which is kind of miraculous, given the really lopsided disparity between the two — given the numbers they should have been shot out of the sky, the way the Iraqi Air Force was by the USAF). So it would seem to make sense to keep them going. The question is with what.
sdhays
@Leto: I recall that one of the challenges that was reported is that the Polish MiGs have been extensively modified with NATO technologies. So not only would pilots need some retraining, but the logistics of maintaining them would be different from Ukraine’s other MiGs.
But the takeaway, to me, is that Ukraine is fine with 2-3 weeks of ramp up time for the pilots, and it seems like Ukraine and NATO could come up with a reasonable plan to make the logistics happen in that kind of timeframe. So NATO should make it happen. But, of course, I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
Leto
@kalakal: @Carlo Graziani: here’s an article from 2017 on fresh US pilots who’s only experience is the F35: Peeking into the Air Force’s F-35 Training Course
Burnside’s B-course began Dec. 5 with a month of classroom basics to identify how each system in the F-35 — the Pentagon’s most expensive program to date — works.
Omnes Omnibus
@Leto: I would think it would be similar to the problems that would come if we sent M1A1 tanks. They run on JP8, so the Ukrainians would need a whole new POL supply system. The socket wrenches are a different system, so they would need to be replaced. The mechanics would have to learn how to keep ’em running and fix ’em when they go tango uniform. Then the crews would have to learn everything about the new system so that everything that they did in it was nearly instinctive. It’s a bitch. Doing during wartime would be worse.
Another Scott
@sdhays:
Lots of people would like nothing better than to take Russia down a few notches, get back “their land”, etc. VVP is going to be reaping the whirlwind soon.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fake Irishman
@Leto:
and to reemphasize what you said upthread: none of this is a knock on the skills or determination of Ukrainian pilots or ground crew, it’s just logistics. (But maybe this will shake those old MiG 29s loose or get the UA some better AA missle systems.)
Leto
@sdhays:
To a degree I’m sure they could. But getting them in a timely manner is a different question. Ofc some of the parts are a bit bigger than a Javelin/comparable system, so the convoys for that stuff might be a bit bigger on the Russian radar.
Fake Irishman
Here’s a question for the board:
what sorts of military equipment does Ukraine produce locally? They’ve got a history of skilled manufacturing and some individual versions of upgraded USSR legacy stuff. What weapons systems are they handling themselves vs. asking NATO for help with?
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
NATO Airforces have done joint exercises with the Ukrainian Airforce. Part of those exercises are “shared cockpit” flights, with a NATO pilot and an Ukrainian Pilot in the same cockpit.
NATO Pilots get to learn first hand the combat abilities, tactics and systems of the Ukrainian MIGs, Ukrainian pilots, the combat abilities, tactics and systems of NATO fighters. Many of the Ukrainian Pilots have attended “fighter schools” in the US, learning US tactics, aircraft and systems, ( as it was inefficient to bring their own aircraft).
So there are probably at least a dozen Ukrainian Pilots with dozens of hands on hours in a NATO fighter jet.
So, yeah a couple of weeks is possible to get some NATO aircraft into combat. The sticky part for the Ukrainian Airforce, will be training up other pilots that don’t have that experience.
The Russian Airforce overmatches the Ukrainian Airforce in Beyond Visual Range, longer range AAM’s with “fire and forget”, along with AARM features. Ukrainian pilots have to manually keep a radar lock on a target to guide their shorter ranged missiles in, in an environment where the Russian Airforce has AWACs and long range ground based radar systems.
NATO systems overmatch Russian Airforce systems in the Beyond Visual Range combat. They see farther, see more, data link with each other, have fire and forget systems, and longer range more accurate missiles that are harder to spoof or jam. One aircraft can “paint” a target with their radar for a few seconds, while another aircraft can “take the shot” with out ever turning it’s radar on, remaining “unseen” by the enemy aircraft and sending missiles in from a completely different direction that the enemy pilot is anticipating.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly; while I was focusing just on the pilots, the maintenance crew would be in the same Olympic deep end. If they were able to get their hands on the modified MiGs sdhayes was mentioning, that would help tremendously. But atm it doesn’t look like any of those plans are coming to fruition.
VeniceRiley
@sanjeevs: oooh! Doesn’t look OT at all to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Aussie sheila: Thank you for that.
sanjeevs
@VeniceRiley: That helicopter raid into Belgorod is amazing. Real Dolittle raid stuff.
YY_Sima Qian
Well, if the Ukrainians are to concentrate their forces & go on the offensive around Kyiv, they will need more than Starstreaks & Stingers for AD against Russian air strikes. Starstreak especially does not appear to be all that mobile, & will not keep up w/ advancing columns. Those 2 are useful point defense systems, great for taking out choppers & harassing low flying jets, but they do not provide area defense. Unfortunately, tactical air defense has been an area long neglected by NATO forces, comfortable their assumption of air dominance.
Any former Warsaw Pact forces still operating Buks? Did they every operate Buks?
Perhaps Soviet era SP AAAs… Perhaps the Brits can offer the self propelled variants of the Starstreak.
Leto
@Jay:
I’m just going to say, dozens doesn’t cut it in this environment. Here’s an article from 2017 on one of the last major exercises we did with them, Clear Sky: US Air Force’s huge exercise in Ukraine fuels growing partnership and that country’s NATO ambitions
Here’s a part on the JTAC training:
How much of their JTAC do they still have? That’s an essential part of this.
Again, absolutely not knocking them. It’s just… it’s going to take more than 2-3 weeks.
L85NJGT
Vidaud just bad at his job, or were there other factors that might have colored his analysis?
Poe Larity
Doesn’t matter how good the pilots are, it matters how good the maintenance is:
https://www.dvidshub.net/news/252906/114th-maintenance-group-instrumental-achieving-4000-flying-hours
Another Scott
@VeniceRiley: On your first, I assume it is the same as this?
Zooks!
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: Pretty gutsy mission.
That, & the fact that the Ukrainian Air Force is still flying sorties & remaining a nuisance, really makes me wonder how effective the Russian Air Force is in using their AWACs. Ukraine is pretty flat, AWACs should have seen the Ukrainian helicopters.
VeniceRiley
Meanwhile, reporting from slash dot. Remember there? It’s still a thing!
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/03/31/2113221/russias-site-blocking-system-isnt-performing-and-could-even-collapse
Jay
@Fake Irishman:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Ukraine
Mai Naem mobile
@eclare: I want to know what Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King are doing. Norah O’Donnell has always come across as at least right of center if not straight out right. I did go on the CBS news homepage yesterday and its perfectly possible I was looking for it so I noticed it but the top stories tended to be negative towards Biden and the Dems.
Mai Naem mobile
I honestly have been avoiding reading the Ukraine stories. My brain has had enough negative stuff the past five years and especially the COVID stuff the last 18 months or so. I cannot believe Putin was not taken care of before – I mean years ago after the initial killing/poisoning stuff . Guess Russian dirty money was too important to rich people.
sanjeevs
@Mai Naem mobile: They also employ Catherine Herridge. Ex-Fox and employed to launder GOP attacks.
Mike in DC
1. More S-300 and Buk systems
2. More Eastern Bloc SPA and MLRS
3. Send all 70 Migs in Nato inventory
Longer term(will require training):
4. Patriot or NASAMS systems
5. Mobile antiship missile systems
6. Western fighter jets and maybe A-10s, drones too
7. HIMARS with ATACMS
8. Blackhawks for rapid short range airlift
9. Eastern bloc tanks and Centauro TDs from Italy
If we(the West) give them all that over the next 3-6 months Ukraine will grind the Russian armed forces into dust.
sdhays
@Another Scott: There was a report of Azerbaijan, I think, possibly sending troops into demilitarized region as well.
The problem with being a bully who treats even allies poorly is that when you really need friends, no one appears.
Speaking of which, I haven’t heard anything for several days about what Xi has decided to do. There was some talk about sending some aid, including food, for the Russian Army. But I never heard that China actually decided to do it. And with the war going worse and worse for Russia, will Xi actually consider it worth tying China that loser pariah?
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
in the interview Adam posted recently with a Ukrainian Pilot, they have been flying “nape of the earth” until contact to avoid Russian radar systems including AWACs. Ground based radars can’t see over the horizon or behind a small hill. I would guess that Russian AWACs have a hard time dealing with “ground clutter” if you are low enough.
NATO AWACs have the ability to “see” ground traffic.
kalakal
@Carlo Graziani: Thanks Carlo, that seems realistic
Mai Naem mobile
@sanjeevs: don’t forget John Roberts and Major Garrett, also FOX alums.
kalakal
@Carlo Graziani: Thank you Carlo, that seems realistic. I do miss access to all the journals, dbs etc
eclare
@Mai Naem mobile: That I don’t know. But I was not surprised Colbert took CBS to task. It was toward the end of his monologue, which I’m sure you can Google (on my phone and I don’t know how to link).
kalakal
Apologies for multiple identical posts, site kept crashing
kalakal
@Leto: Oh absolutely it would be a harder transition from migs to say F16s, Typhoons, Rafaeles etc. I was looking for a baseline
bjacques
I read that cyberattack article about Hungary. That’s some self-sabotage a Trump appointee could only dream of, almost rooting NATO. Bravo to mid- and ground-level cyber experts everywhere! And Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó is the slick bastard who does the rounds of on BBC and CNN International justifying his country’s media and academic censorship and anti-LGBTQ+ laws as “defending European values”. He deserves decades in jail.
Ishiyama
@Jay:
In theory, then, how does one take down or otherwise defeat an AWACs?
eddie blake
@Ishiyama: SAMs. AWACS are big, slow jets that have to fly in a pattern. you could also sortie fighters.
oldster
On the basis of absolutely zero knowledge of the inside or outside kind, I conjecture that there is a good-sized contingent of foreign pilots and ex-pilots with extensive experience flying F-16s who have volunteered their services to Ukraine.
Given how many regular infantry have volunteered (lots), I’d conjecture that there are 50 -100 pilots from Canada, Australia, Israel, Germany, and, yes, the US of A, who are in Ukraine right now, learning about their systems, and itching for a horse to ride.
F-16s have been in service for what, 40 years? That’s a lot of generations of pilots trained on them. A fair few are of Ukrainian ancestry. Others spent their careers facing off against Ivan. And some just want to strike a blow against tyranny, and for humanity.
Thirty five days ago, I was extremely cautious about US or NATO involvement in this war, and very glad that Biden is the cautious, level-headed professional he is. Thirty five days on, I am growing convinced that the most important way to prevent a wider war and a global conflagration is to make sure that Russia loses this war, entirely, on Ukrainian soil.
That’s why I wrote to my president to ask him to give Ukraine what it asks for.
YY_Sima Qian
@Ishiyama:
@eddie blake:
Stealth fighter that AWACs don’t see until they get w/in BVRAAM range, and/or ultra long range AAMs that are cued by your own AWACs. Or shoot down their tanker support using the same weapons, or destroy the bases they operate out of.
YY_Sima Qian
@oldster: There is still the problem of service & maintenance.
eddie blake
@YY_Sima Qian: yup. really, it’s a question of what assets you have and how many of them are you willing to deploy.
Ruckus
@YY_Sima Qian:
There will always be problems, nothing human is perfect. And war is a human endeavor, which the russians seem to A. not be all that good at, but they do have numbers and B. the Ukraine seems to be very, very good at. What they have now is not enough. Sure they likely will actually win, but at what cost? Yes they may not be excellent at flying F16s. The opposition seems to actually not be as good. So at the risk of being wrong we effectively say that more Ukraine citizens have to die? If they are anyway can we really afford not to give them every chance? And yes I get the quite possible political reactions, but it sure looks like those are happening anyway. If I’m more right than those saying no I think it’s worth the risk. Give them planes and rockets.
Ruckus
@eclare:
It was brutal. I can fully imagine him being fired tomorrow. I can imagine CBS going under by Tuesday. That second thing wouldn’t bother me one bit if they did the first. But damn was it brutal.
oldster
@YY_Sima Qian:
Agreed, you need the ground crew, too.
But the answer is the same. For every Canadian ex- AF pilot of Ukrainian descent, there are five Canadian AF vets of Ukrainian descent who were not pilots, but mechanics, munitions loaders, refuelers, and so on. They too want to put their skills to use for the glory of Ukraine.
There’s a big reservoir of trained expertise out there. My guess is that Zhelensky knows he can get the personnel to maintain and fly NATO planes, esp vintage ones, if he can get the hardware.
eddie blake
@Ruckus: wow. WTF, indeed.
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: No. Colbert should not be fired. Whichever ignoramous CBS suits signed off on Mulvaney should be fired. Promptly. Several of them. Clean house.
Also, I’m pretty sure Noron is a Republican; at the very least, an enabler.
Hearing that “Democrats are going to get wiped out in the midterms!!” just motivates me to make that not so.
Elizabelle
Here is Colbert’s segment; Mulvaney remarks begin about 8:20. He calls Mulvaney “Nostra-Dumbass.” And — more to the point: about 10:20:
“Why would the Tiffany network’s venerable news division put this craven toady to a tyrant on their payroll?”
Why indeed? Good for Colbert. Heads should roll at CBS. Not Colbert’s.
Sebastian
I’ve been busy a few days. Hello and thank you for the great work!
Same here, the F-15 and F-16 statements made me stop right there. Seriously? Don’t we have like a thousand stored in Arizona? I am exaggerating of course but if that statement is true we can ship the KpsZSU any number of planes they want!! Hahaha
Sebastian
@oldster:
Who says the ground crew has to be Ukrainian and who says they have to be serviced in Ukraine?
oldster
@Sebastian:
Agreed — there’s no need for either ground crews or pilots to be Ukrainian. They just have to be people of good will, experienced in flying and maintaining F-16s via training in Anglosphere or NATO air forces.
My point was simply that the Ukrainian diaspora in the US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere provides a natural reservoir of such personnel. I’d like to think that many US and Canadian vets of other ethnicities are willing to answer the call, too.
daveNYC
@YY_Sima Qian: Starstreaks have a straight up MANPAD shoulder launched version. The bigger problem for any Ukrainian advance is that they’d have to stick to the roads, and Russia has a lot of artillery.
YY_Sima Qian
@Sebastian: Planes have to be maintained & repaired between missions, especially combat missions. If they are being serviced outside of Ukraine, meaning in NATO territories, that implies they will be taking off from NATO territories directly to fly combat missions against the Russian military. I am pretty sure that is a bridge too far for every single NATO member.
It’s one thing to cobble together a few dozen vets of various nationalities to form a light infantry platoon, it is quite another to cobble together some people (even if they have experience working on F16s/F15s) and expect them to become an effective ground crew team. Servicing/repairing combat aircraft is technically demanding, I imagine much more so than mechanics for trucks and tanks. Any such ground support volunteer unit will also be a scarce resource in the Ukrainian theater, since the it will take quite a while for the Ukrainian crews to get up to speed on the very complex & very foreign equipment.
Then there is the hardware aspect. Can Soviet vintage Ukrainian munitions be mounted on NATO hard points, & compatible w/ NATO aircraft’s fire control systems (almost definitely not)? Do Soviet vintage fueling line hook up to refueling ports of NATO aircraft? Are diagnostic equipment for Soviet aircraft compatible w/ NATO hardware (almost certainly not). If you have to bring the NATO spec service equipment & NATO spec munitions w/ the ex-NATO fighter planes, volunteer ground crews w/ the volunteer pilots, now it is a massive operation. At that a point, NATO might as well officially join the fight. We are not talking about ex-South African pilots flying modified crop-dusters, dropping unguided bombs, on hapless guerrillas in African bush wars.
If NATO countries are willing to take the risk of sending volunteers manning ex-NATO hardware, doing so w/ ex-Soviet vintage equipment & ex-Soviet (or at least compatible) munitions still makes more sense. More plausible deniability, Ukrainian ground crews are familiar w/ such equipment, Ukrainian airfields have ready infrastructure to support such equipment, etc.
YY_Sima Qian
@Jay: Yeah, RuAF’s AWACs are old (late Soviet vintage) w/ limited upgrades. Their updated & modernized versions are still in flight testing.
oldster
@YY_Sima Qian:
Agree with all of that, and I was going to make the same reply to Sebastian about the impossibility of carrying out maintenance outside Ukraine.
And the problems that you mention with integrating US hardware are more good reasons why it would be simpler for NATO to give them legacy MIGs — I hope they’ll do it soon.
At the same time, all of the issues that you list must be well known to the UA air force, and to Zhelensky. Their persistent call for F-16s and other non-MIG hardware suggests to me that they have a plan up their sleeves for how to put those planes to good use.
They have proven themselves to be smart, pragmatic, cautious, and respectful of their personnel. They are not going to send their own pilots up in unfamiliar planes only to get shot down at the first encounter. Even if they were willing to throw away NATO materiel in that way, they would not throw away the lives of Ukrainian pilots.
So, I have to think they have another plan in mind, and I’ve laid out my best guess as to what it may be. Pure conjecture, though — I have no evidence of even the thinnest kind.
YY_Sima Qian
@oldster: I see it as classical bargaining strategy, ask for the sky when you actually hope for something more realistic. When the Ukrainians keep asking for frontline NATO equipment, NATO sending ex-Soviet equipment will appear conservative & measured.
lowtechcyclist
Another thought about the F-15s and F-16s: we don’t expect Ukraine to emerge victorious in a matter of weeks, right? To evict Russian troops from everywhere Ukraine controlled pre-2/24 is going to take months, minimum. And that’s not even talking about the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk that Russia and Russian-backed rebels controlled pre-2/24, or the Crimean peninsula.
So while I’d like to see those Polish MiG-29s go to Ukraine now (and IIRC from discussions a month ago, there’s maybe 40 more in other former Warsaw Pact nations), I’d say give ’em the F-15s and F-16s as well so that Ukrainian pilots can be skilled in flying them by summer.
debbie
Thanks, everyone.
@Leto: Ukraine specifically said they wanted the technology more than just a flying machine that drop bombs, so it didn’t seem possible.
debbie
@eclare:
Colbert spent a lot of monologue time on Mulvaney. I can’t imagine Moonves et al. would be amused, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
YY_Sima Qian
@lowtechcyclist: Placing the aircrafts in Ukrainian airfields now so Ukrainian pilots & crew can be trained on them over the next months simply invites Russia to strike at these airfields, which also endanger the trainers. An alternative might be sending the Ukrainian pilots & ground crews to NATO countries to be trained, & they come back w/ the equipment, but I don’t quite see any of the NATO countries willing to take that level of risk. Either way, those pilots & ground crews are out of the fight for the duration of the training effort.
At the end of the day, I question whether Ukrainian pilots flying relative unfamiliar F-16s/F-15s (any kind of crash course training will not be the same as the deliberate regimen of NATO pilots on NATO planes) will necessarily be more effective than the same pilots flying the very familiar MiG-29s. Too bad none of the ex-Warsaw Pact countries every flew Su-27 Flankers. That plane has much longer legs & greater weapons load, & also a plane that the Ukrainian Air Force has (had?) in inventory.
(In an alternate universe, there are hundreds of Flankers being retired from the Chinese PLAAF, both Russian built Su-27SKs & Chinese licensed J-11A copies, which can be diverted to Ukraine. Not going to happen in this universe.)
zhena gogolia
@debbie: Moonves is long gone!
MagdaInBlack
@debbie: I just watched that, and holy cow. The blowback is going to be interesting.
NFLTG Colbert.
debbie
@MagdaInBlack:
Right? I have loved him forever!
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Oops, guess I haven’t kept up with conglomerate news. // ??♀️
wetzel
I think the attack this morning on the fuel depot was a good job.
It’s a good job if Ukraine has intelligence Russia may launch a false-flag operation upon itself. It’s similar to Biden’s “gaffe” in directing the path of escalation to cycles that nullify themselves. Russians cannot be made to feel outrage about an attack on a fuel depot that is obviously allowed under the laws of war, so ‘Mother Russia’ has already been attacked. Everybody is getting used to the idea in Russia already. The Russian people are primed not to be so outraged now. Whatever you do for two weeks becomes a habit.
Maybe the plain tactical and strategic rationale is sufficient. Putting together what is happening, it looks like the Ukrainian Army has done a number of steps on the battlefield this past week that will allow it to reinforce their own formations on the Donets River line while impeding the Russian efforts at reinforcement. The city of Belgorad, where the fuel depot was destroyed, is the same location a half dozen BTG from Kiev area were being rebuilt. Ukrainians can reinforce their forces in Severodonetsk but Russia cannot bring new units now so easily.
I don’t think Russians want to avenge a fuel depot. Thinking a lot about how fuel is like blood in fascism. It’s really difficult to articulate, but I think fascism sees human blood as the lesser fuel, and petroleum as the greater fuel. It sees them both on the scientific axis. Petroleum is the greater fuel because it powers the spectacle of violence which is the essence of the fascist moral universe. Russian units are not permitted to waste fuel to retrieve their fallen dead, because the crime of ‘wasting fuel’ is like drinking the communion wine saved for a black mass, except that fascism is not a religious form of thinking, but anti-sacred. The Russian units in Belgorad were probably cheering to see it go up.
Thinking about things like this is causing me mental strain. I’m seeing the devil’s tail leaving the room when I come in like a Dostoevsky character. I’m glad I have the opportunity to watch the same thing 1000 times in InDesign today and binge some dumb movie or listen to Sturgill Simpson and try to decide if he should have given his songs to somebody else to sing.
Hoodie
@YY_Sima Qian: I think it’s a bit of a fantasy to think the Ukrainians can operate F-16s effectively. Modern combat aircraft are really just platforms for carrying varying suites of subsystems, including communications, targeting and weapons delivery systems. As an example, I used to work for the company that builds the AN/APG-66 (upgrades since) fire control radar for those. It’s a rugged and pretty reliable system, but it alone has a logistics trail a mile long, including special tooling, test fixtures, etc. Duplicate that for every other system on the aircraft, e.g., engines, AAMs, FLIR pods, etc. I’m sure the Ukrainians are very resourceful, but how do you get all that stuff to Ukraine and get maintenance people up to speed on it, especially in the middle of a war? Do the Ukrainians even have pilots to spare for even 2 to 3 weeks of F-16 training, since they presumably would have to go outside of Ukraine for this training? It would be hard enough to get them up to speed on those modified Polish MiGs.
YY_Sima Qian
@Hoodie: That’s why I think it is part of a negotiating strategy on the part of the Ukrainians.
wetzel
@Hoodie: You’d be surprised what a person can do when the stakes are high enough and they are willing to make mistakes. Anybody who has ever accomplished something where they had to learn something on the computer, an application or to solve a programming challenge, knows you learn a technology a lot faster when you have a job to do. In training the airplane is ‘at hand’. In a fight, the airplane is ‘to hand’. They will understand the purpose of the more complex evolutions of the system they are already familiar with. The Ukrainians are already the best pilots in the world and they know it. Even when we think we are working hard, we are usually learning at our leisure.
Carlo Graziani
@lowtechcyclist: this is a very sensible comment. The 24-hr news cycle accustoms people to narrative-driven expectations of the timescales on which things can happen. An example is the people who were claiming, in the first weeks of the war, that NATO was doing nothing. Obviously, the massive arms supplies and deep intelligence arrangements that were set up in those days of “appeasement” had some considerable effects that we are seeing on the battlefield now.
The war will change on timescales of weeks and months, even though CNN will demand to be fed a story every 24 hours, and Twitter will burst into feather at every gobbet of news. It makes sense to think, and plan, on those timescales. An equipment and training ramp-up that exploits the Ukrainian armed forces high motivation to bring them to something approximating NATO standards by late summer seems like an achievable goal, and a total nightmare for Russia.
wetzel
@Hoodie: Also, it is not a correct idea, that the recipients of F-15’s or F-16’s have to figure out spare parts, repairs, support for the planes. The manufacturers and contractors have teams just like a big company putting in a machine tool. They will get Ukraine set up. This is just normal business going faster with higher stakes. American companies are good at business.
wetzel
With singer-songwriters, one of them is always selling the other short, in my opinion. If you are a great songwriter, you should write for a great performer. I’m just clarifying my Sturgill Simpson comment. It’s the worst for me with Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell because they are great songwriters and pretty good performers. Now, Jason Isbell is a great singer and player. He really is, but he should sing other people’s songs and write for performers for a while to clear his head. That’s just my opinion. His cover of Driver 8 is the best thing in music this year.
I can’t listen to Radiohead even though they are geniuses for this reason. Radiohead does not write vocal melody. It is the same minor foothold. They write their songs just for themselves, which is a syndrome that can happen with singer-songwriters. I think this is true. I think it’s better for a song to write it for a great performer and make it good enough to pass muster with another artist who can make the song their own. Jason Isbell doesn’t even know which of his songs are good anymore. Him saying that in an interview got me thinking about the problem. He’s a great artist and doesn’t need advice, but there it is anyway.
From my mountain-top perch, Bruce Springsteen is almost alone in being a good enough performer for his own songs. Who else? Chuck Berry? Kenny Chesney? It’s better for a songwriter not to be too good looking that they want to get on stage, as a general rule, from the perspective of the song. That’s my theory, although all these artists have lots of gold records. I think it is true in the aesthetic evidence, for example, in how Nashville country music is still a million miles better than Portland singer-songwriter country, outside of Blind Pilot, even though the audience and artists are generally a lot less educated.
Tarragon
Fuck, Dima’s story made me cry and I couldn’t even watch it.
RaflW
I was road tripping the last two days (fyi with a little planning and observing, paying btwn $3.59 – 3.79 a gallon in America’s heartland, which seemed hardly awful). Heard on NPR yesterday afternoon that Putin is calling up 120,000 new conscripts. Perhaps this is old news, I’ve read Adam’s posts but not comments much because of travel.
What are the chances that many of these draftees will be excited to join the meat grinder?
wetzel
@RaflW: Gallows humor is the purest form of Russian humanism. Russian comrades riding to their doom for the tyrant thousands of miles away. The story of the steppes since Genghis Khan.
Escape to the wild fields and risk capture by the Nogol Horde if you want to try your luck some other way. You are cannon meat. Cargo 200. When did you suppose you had some other fate, conscript? You are my son now and we will die together today. The irony is that the greater the humanism the harder they will be to defeat. An army like that is hard to defeat.
Ishiyama
Since Ukraine now denies that it attacked the Belgorod fuel depot, we can only speculate as to the truth. But I can’t believe that no one has tracked the flight of the two helicopters.
J R in WV
@debbie:
Moonves left CBS in 2018 under a huge cloud of sexual abuse charges. …Dunno who took his place, obviously as stupid as Moonves!
ETA: Not the first person with this non-news… sorry.
wetzel
@Ishiyama: Ukraine both did and did not attack Russia yesterday. Last week, Biden did and did not say that regime change is American policy. People complain on the Sunday shows because the plot on the TV doesn’t make sense, but Russia doesn’t really have much to be upset about, if you think about it. It’s not really a crisis for Russia.
Barney
Pop quiz: which ex-Balloon Juice front pager signed on to this abomination:
Co-signers include Michael Anton, infamous “Flight 93 – only Trump can save the USA” author, Glenn Greenwald, Josh Hammer (far right Newsweek opinion editor), and Christopher Rufo, inventor of the Critical Race Theory hoax.
Fucking Freddie deBoer, of course.
(Lawyers, Guns & Money are reading the ‘Compact’ “red”-brown alliance, so we don’t have to.)
Ravenscroft
“To me the most interesting part of this thread is tweet #12, which states that Ukrainian pilots could get up to speed on F-15s and F-16s with only two or three weeks of training.”
I believe it is doable, @KpsZSU has trained extensively with our ANG. Meet ‘Juice’
https://coffeeordie.com/ukrainian-mig-29-pilot-interview/