Early this morning, the Ukrainians attacked the Russian naval base in Novorossiysk:
Initial footage!
BOOP! pic.twitter.com/1b1Ai5HBaY
— Giant Military Cats (@giantcat9) August 4, 2023
⛴️/2. The moment of the attack on the Russian “Olenegorski Gornjak” from the point of view of Ukrainian sea drone pic.twitter.com/RZEI592nyX
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 4, 2023
This afternoon they went after the Crimean bridge.
/2. Presumably a sea drones attack in the area of the Crimean bridge, according to Russian sources. Some Russian sources also claime that air defence was also active.
In any case, it is yet too early to draw any conclusions.— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 4, 2023
More on both of these after the jump.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
Fair and honest end to Russian aggression will benefit everyone in the world – address of President of Ukraine
4 August 2023 – 18:47
Dear Ukrainians, I wish you good health!
A brief report for the day.
The first is a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s Staff. The meeting was long, much longer than planned.
The situation on the front line was analyzed in detail, all areas – those where we are holding the line, and those where we are moving forward step by step.
The commanders reported: Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny, General Syrsky, General Tarnavsky. We discussed in detail how and in what terms, what kind of support, what kind of logistics would be the best result for Ukraine.
Manufacturing of ammunition and weapons in Ukraine, by our defense industry. We simplify all procedures as much as possible, remove all red tape still hindering manufacturers. Minister for Strategic Industries Kamyshin reported. The result will be.
The Black Sea and food exports, the security of our ports – the commander of the Navy, government officials, intelligence chiefs reported. Let not the Russian terrorists even hope they would manage to provoke a global food crisis or create another price calamity.
Ukrainian food exports are a key factor in the stability of food markets. And we work with all our partners both in the region and in the world in general to guarantee food security.
By the way, Tomorrow in Jeddah – in Saudi Arabia – a meeting of advisors to heads of state and representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the Peace Formula will begin. Many countries will be represented, different continents, including the countries of the Global South.
It is very important because in such matters as food security, the fate of millions of people in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world directly depends on how fast the world will be in implementing the Peace Formula.
I am grateful to Saudi Arabia for this platform for negotiations. A meeting in the same format was recently held in Copenhagen. We are moving step by step towards the Global Peace Summit.
It is very important that the world sees: a fair and honest end to Russian aggression will benefit everyone in the world. Everyone! Liberating Ukrainian land from the occupiers means restoring full respect for international law and the UN Charter. Eliminating all threats created by Russia to Ukrainian and global security means returning peace to international relations and stability to global life. I am grateful to everyone who supports the Peace Formula and has already joined the joint efforts for the full implementation of the Formula.
Today, I had the opportunity to once again thank everyone who in the United States is helping Ukraine to defend its freedom: both parties, Congress, President Biden, every American family and community. American leadership is indeed vital. And not only for freedom in our region – these are global things. And at a meeting with Christopher Christie, one of the influential figures in American politics, a member of the Republican Party, we talked about exactly how important it is to strengthen support for freedom, support for democracy. And I am grateful that Mr. Christie is one of those people who wants to see the situation with his own eyes. He began his visit to Ukraine with a visit to Bucha. There one can fully see what Russian aggression brings to Ukraine and all of Europe, the entire free world.
Today, there was also a report by SSU Chief Maliuk. I will not voice the content. I will only say that we are all grateful to the Security Service of Ukraine for returning the war to the aggressor state. What you bring to the world, you end up with it yourself.
Thankful to all our heroes! Thankful to everyone in the world who supports Ukraine! Thankful to everyone who brings the implementation of the Peace Formula closer!
We must win. And we will win!
Glory to Ukraine!
Notice this part:
Today, there was also a report by SSU Chief Maliuk. I will not voice the content. I will only say that we are all grateful to the Security Service of Ukraine for returning the war to the aggressor state. What you bring to the world, you end up with it yourself.
That’s all the official acknowledgement President Zelenskyy is going to provide right now on this morning’s strike.
Novorossiysk:
⛴️/4. As said the operation was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine. The sea drone carried 450kg of explosives. https://t.co/Z6xDtigxwI
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 4, 2023
⛴️/6. Some information on Russian “Olenegorsky gornjak” large landing ship:
– Displacement: ~2,768 tons standard (4,012 tons full load)
– Length: 112.5 m
– Crew: ~98 people
– In service from: 30 June 1976 pic.twitter.com/ll88mmT3wy— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 4, 2023
And the result that never happened according to Russia pic.twitter.com/m6bxsHMqNK
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 4, 2023
And the Crimean bridge:
/3. According to some claims, a Russian tanker «Sig» was damaged as a result of a sea drone hit. Engine room flooded. The crew was not injured. Also as claimed: the tanker was empty, the tanker cannot move on its own pic.twitter.com/1M3PXCeS2g
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 4, 2023
/5. Also, Sig continued to deliver fuel to Syria, despite sanctions, even as of August 2022. https://t.co/3qPmNVij0F
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 4, 2023
So, slow news day.
The Azovstal garrison leader Denys Prokopenko is back in action pic.twitter.com/NjSPRbL7Fi
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 4, 2023
Reuters is reporting that Russia has doubled its defense spending.
LONDON, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Russia has doubled its 2023 defence spending target to more than $100 billion – a third of all public expenditure – a government document reviewed by Reuters showed, as the costs of the war in Ukraine spiral and place growing strain on Moscow’s finances.
The figures shed light on Russia’s spending on the conflict at a time when sector-specific budget expenditure data is no longer published.
They show that in the first half of 2023 alone, Russia spent 12%, or 600 billion roubles, more on defence than the 4.98 trillion roubles ($54 billion) it had originally targeted for 2023.
Defence spending in the first six months of 2023 amounted to 5.59 trillion roubles, 37.3% of a total 14.97 trillion roubles spent in the period, the document showed. Russia’s budget plan envisages 17.1% of total funds spent on “National Defence”.
Russia’s government and finance ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the numbers.
Rising war costs are supporting Russia’s modest economic recovery this year with higher industrial production, but have already pushed budget finances to a deficit of around $28 billion – a figure compounded by falling export revenues.
Higher spending on defence, as Moscow prosecutes what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, could widen the deficit further, while the boost in output could cannibalise other sectors and crowd out private investment.
Reuters calculations based on the document showed that Russia had spent 19.2% on defence in the first six months of all initially planned budget expenditure for 2023 as a whole.
The last publicly available data showed Moscow had spent 2 trillion roubles on the military in January and February. In the first half of this year, budget expenditure was 2.44 trillion roubles higher than the same period of 2022. Based on the document, 97.1% of that extra sum was directed to the defence sector.
The document provided a new estimate for annual defence spending of 9.7 trillion roubles, one third of the total spending target of 29.05 trillion roubles, which would be the highest share in at least the last decade.
Between 2011 and 2022, Russia spent a minimum of 13.9% and a maximum 23% of its budget on defence.
Russia has already spent 57.4% of its new annual defence budget, the document showed.
Military production has driven a strong recovery in industrial output, and analysts say that state defence contracts have been a key driver in Russia’s economic recovery to GDP growth so far this year from a 2.1% contraction in 2022.
Specific defence funding falls under closed expenditures, but some data, though no longer public, is circulated. For example, the document shows that Russia spent almost 1 trillion roubles on military salaries in the first half, 543 billion roubles more than in the same period last year.
Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said in July that the defence industry was now producing more munitions each month than it did in the whole of 2022.
Funding for schools, hospitals and roads was already being squeezed this year in favour of defence and security, but as the share of defence spending grows, other areas could face cuts.
“The military industrial complex is enabling industrial growth, ‘civilian’ industries are slowing down again,” said Dmitry Polevoy, head of investment at Locko-Invest, after last week’s industrial output data for June.
That showed a 6.5% year-on-year increase, largely thanks to last year’s low base effect. When excluding seasonal production, growth stopped altogether.
CentroCreditBank economist Yevgeny Suvorov said the military industry was running at full capacity.
“We don’t know what the potential for a further increase in the output of tanks and missiles is,” Suvorov said on his MMI Telegram channel. “But we know that increasing this output even further is possible only at the expense of haemorrhaging more staff from other sectors of the economy.”
Net exporter Russia typically posts budget surpluses, but will post a deficit for the second year running, with the value of energy exports down 47% year-on-year in the first half.
More at the link.
Jack Watling, the Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Studies Institute (RUSI) has had a column on Ukraine’s progress published by The Financial Times. Here are some excerpts:
For two months, Ukrainian forces have been on the offensive, trying to break through Russian defence lines to begin the liberation of the occupied territories. The fighting has been difficult and progress has been incremental. But over time, the Ukrainians have been securing the advantage. The question now is whether they can push Russian forces to breaking point.
After wasting thousands of troops in a failed spring offensive, the Russian military fell back to around 45km of defensive positions, stretching across the southern front from Zaporizhzhia through Donetsk, to prevent Ukrainian troops advancing towards the strategic, Russian-held city of Melitopol. The so-called Surovikin Line, named after a Russian general, comprises three lines of hardened trenches, each screened by dense minefields, anti-tank ditches, tank traps and wire entanglements. In front of these, Russian fighting positions are bolstered by anti-tank and anti-personnel mines.
Since the start of the offensive in early June, Moscow has adopted new tactics. Russian forces allow Ukrainians to enter the minefields and then aggressively counterattack, often with tanks and anti-tank guided weapons on the flanks. Once Ukrainian vehicles are knocked out, the Russians deploy mortars and artillery against the infantry. If Kyiv’s forces get across the minefields and into the trenches, the Russians often abandon their fighting positions and detonate prepositioned charges to kill the first wave of attackers.
After attempts to breach the minefields using explosives led to heavy Ukrainian casualties, Kyiv has adapted its tactics, infiltrating Russian positions to confuse the defenders and strike from the flanks, before attempting breaches. These methods have reduced Ukrainian losses, but the necessary planning and reconnaissance makes this a slow process, in which the Ukrainians fight for 700m at a time. This gives their opponents the chance to reset. But accelerating the process leads to an unacceptable rate of equipment loss. For the Ukrainians, the key is to manage their equipment, such as vehicles, to exploit a breach once it has been made.
As well as assaulting Russian positions, since early June Kyiv has also used precision missiles provided by its partners to destroy counter-battery radar. Without them, Moscow has found itself outranged and unable to locate Ukrainian artillery. Kyiv’s forces, by contrast, have become adept at locating Russian guns and destroying them with precision shells.
This systematic erosion of Russian artillery has been a turning point: for the first time in the war, Ukrainian howitzers can deliver sustained fire on to Russian positions. It also means that Moscow — while still destroying Ukrainian vehicles in the minefields — has less artillery power to kill the infantry that emerge from them. As a result, Ukrainian troops are succeeding in taking Russian positions, even when their vehicles are caught in the open.
In response, Moscow has had to be more aggressive with its own armoured vehicles. This has inflicted heavy casualties on Ukrainians, but deploying such vehicles close to the front has left them vulnerable. During the day, dozens of Ukrainian drones surveil the battlespace, filming and identifying targets. At night, these units send repurposed agricultural drones carrying rocket-propelled grenades to hunt for Russian armour.
The attrition of critical equipment is important for Kyiv both tactically and operationally. Ukraine has been using Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by the UK to hit command posts, ammunition depots and bridges behind Russian lines. Together, the destruction of artillery, armour, radars and the loss of supplies are leaving Moscow’s infantry with diminishing support. However, Russian units continue to fight hard and Ukraine’s own equipment losses remain high. Kyiv’s forces are struggling with persistent Russian attack helicopters, which sit 8km to 10km from the front at low altitude, safe from air defences, and fire anti-tank missiles at Ukrainian vehicles.
More at the link!
On Wednesday night, Ms. D Ranged in AZ asked:
Adam, I have questions and I apologize if this is something you’ve addressed in previous posts but I haven’t been able to read them all….My questions are regarding the drone attacks inside of Russia (IF they are being perpetrated by Ukrainian forces, which I believe is true, correct me if I’m wrong). It seems like most of the drone attacks in Russia have tried to target legit governmental and/or militarily sites. However, they are risking civilian casualties. I mean it’s easy to see that Russia is targeting civilians by hitting apartment buildings and train stations full of refugees, etc. But the Ukrainian drones hits are not as clear. For example there was a video on CNN the other day of a strike in a swanky shopping district in Moscow. The building(s) hit did produce evidence of some government purpose having been targeted. It was done at night, when the area was not as busy as it might have been during the day. I guess my question is a political one….do you think these attacks undermine the Ukrainian argument that Russia is acting like a terrorist by targeting civilians when Ukraine is risking similar results by their own drone strikes? Are these drone strikes by unofficial Ukrainian actors? Or are they something that Ukraine won’t claim but are perfectly willing to take advantage of (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, so to speak)? What are the military value of these strikes do you think (other than forcing the consequences of the war into the news within Russia) because so far Russians seem very detached from what is going on. What are your thoughts on these strikes?
Let’s start with the answer of one of our resident lawyers, who is a former artillerist in the US Army, Omnes Omnibus provided on Wednesday night:
Civilian casualties are a fact of life in warfare. The laws of war require that you not deliberately target civilians and that you take reasonable precautions to prevent civilians from being harmed. One side is following the rules, and the other is deliberately violating them.
I’ve got no problems with what the Ukrainians are doing in their targeting of legitimate Russian military, security services, and/or governmental targets. Whether in Moscow or elsewhere in Russia. There is, however, an additional consideration. Or there is, at least, for some. And that is whether targeting like this is covered under just war theory. The answer to this is yes. Just War Theory is broken down into two parts. The first is Jus ad Bellum. The second is Jus ad Bello. Depending on who is racking and stacking these you either get four conditions in each or six in the first and two in the second. Some actually have a third set of conditions – Jus Post Bello – for the ethical requirements post conflict termination. Two of the Jus ad Bello requirements are:
- The condition of proportionality must be fulfilled. That is, the violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered. (One is not to bomb a country ‘into the Stone Age’ if victory may also be had less destructively.)
- The principle of non-combatant immunity must be observed, that is, some distinction must be made between combatants and non-combatants or, respectively, between legitimate and illegitimate human targets of a direct attack. That is, civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing them. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
The second of these conditions deals with what Omnes was referring to in his response on Wednesday and is in line with, and influenced, the laws of war. The first one, proportionality, is also important. In regard to Ukraine, the violence that they could inflict on Russia must be proportional to the injury suffered by Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. Given Russia’s repeated targeting of Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure, commitment of crimes against humanity and war crimes, the Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets are most definitely proportional. Moreover, they fall well short of breaching the proportionality threshold because the targeting has been precise; the targets themselves have been legitimate military, security services, and/or governmental targets; and the harm or damage to civilians has been minimal and limited.
As far as I’m concerned what Ukraine is doing is both legal and ethical.
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
There is a new Patron slide show on his official TikTok page. As this is a slide show and not a video it won’t embed here. So click through to see it.
Open thread!
Anonymous At Work
So happy I got those stamps and gave out a bunch. Attacking a port used by ships to interdict grain shipments and as a primary ferry point if Kerch goes out.
And the ethical dimension is that RU is attacking homes at night but UA has targeted businesses in the early hours before work or military targets. One targets civilians with intent to kill; the other intended for maximum disruption and minimum casualties.
Ruckus
Adam, I agree with your assessment of this war. Ukraine is playing by the rules and russia is obviously not and hasn’t been since the start of it.
Maxim
Thank you, Adam. It looks like you have an incomplete thought in the final clause of the final sentence of the paragraph that begins “The second of these,” about the rules of war.
Adam L Silverman
@Maxim: Not that I can tell. I’m happy to fix it, but I’m not seeing it.
Alison Rose
I really appreciate your thoughts (and Omnes’) on Just War Theory, not only for my own (and other jackals’) understanding, but so that we can then bring those explanations to others in our circles. I saw a couple of my friends hand-wring a bit about the strikes in moscow, and my reflexive response is to just be like “don’t start none, won’t be none” but that’s not exactly learned and professional. Very helpful to have a trustworthy and informed source to which to direct them!
This line:
made me snicker. I’m sure 98% of meetings in all of human history could be described as such.
And this line:
is just fucking brilliant. He is quite good at delivering a threat in very plain and innocuous-seeming language.
I was glad to see Christie there, because I think it is incumbent upon those in the GOP who are not russian bootlickers to prove that they are on the right side and to hopefully drag a few of their jackass voters over with them. Not that Christie has many voters at this point, per polling, but you know. (Video from Zelenskyy’s FB)
I want one of these coins!
Thank you as always, Adam.
Anonymous At Work
@Alison Rose: I mean, “Don’t start none, won’t be none” is a pretty good approximation.
Alison Rose
@Anonymous At Work: It’s what I tell my cat when she randomly bites my arm while I’m reading and I bop her (lightly!) on the nose and then she glares at me.
Alison Rose
@Adam L Silverman: I believe there should be a word or two added to “and the harm or damage to civilians” – like “is minimal/limited/unlikely” or some such?
Adam L Silverman
@Maxim: @Alison Rose: Try it now.
Alison Rose
@Adam L Silverman: Це добре! :)
YY_Sima Qian
The FT article is great! Breaching prepared defenses is a battle of attrition, especially when Ukraine does not have air superiority or artillery superiority, although it appears the Ukrainian Army is approaching parity in artillery (& potentially superiority down the line if the supply of Western munitions can be sustained at a high level).
Jay
https://nitter.net/BravoKilo6464/status/1687473928518692865#m
BeautifulPlumage
Thank you for these always important posts, Adam, and the occasional chuckle. The first pic had me laughing.
ETA BOOP!
Yutsano
Am I the only one who looks at that increase in the Russian military budget and thinks some oligarchs are gonna get even more hella rich?
Manyakitty
@Yutsano: someone is. No doubt.
Jay
https://nitter.net/Azovsouth/status/1687177644192813056#m
Jay
@Yutsano:
The Ruzziaian’s passed a new tax law, a 20% clawback on the silovi.
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW the idea that someone might, in good faith, question the Ukrainian strikes on Moscow actually surprised me. I thought that everything they did was so far within the bounds of the laws of war and so restrained given the provocations they have been given that it couldn’t be questioned. The decency and restraint with which the Ukrainians have fought amazes and impresses me. I would hope that, if I were ever in their situation, I could sustain that level of humanity.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I took as less questioning them then wanting reassurance. Remember, you and I have and/or do parts of this stuff for a living. That’s not the case for everyone and Just War Theory isn’t dealt with very much outside of specific parts of academia, law, and military history and studies in the US.
And I’m in complete agreement that the Ukrainians have been amazingly restrained given what they’ve endured.
Kelly
Chris Christie knows a thing or two about closing bridges to inconvenience enemies
BeautifulPlumage
@Kelly: 😸
Yutsano
@Jay: Therefore: moar corruption! You don’t think a tax law will stop them do you?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I wasn’t criticizing the person asking. I was just honestly surprised.
Jay
@Yutsano:
Nope, it will be selectively used to keep the silovi in line.
Go off course on Telegram, lose everything.
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
I read it as more of a question about why Ukrainians were risking handing the Russian propagandists a both-sides narrative with an accidental hit on an apartment building. Obviously, objectively, an accidental drone impact on an apartment building because of a shootdown is not a deliberate hypersonic antiship missile hit (with a 950 kg RDX (or equivalent) warhead) on an apartment building. But Russian propagandists have a lot of resources, including Western accomplices, to generate and amplify the firehose of falsehoods.
JaySinWA
@Adam L Silverman: I saw some early reporting that strongly implied that Ukraine was targeting civilian targets in retribution because the attacks were inside Russian business districts. It appears that that implication was wrong and the reporting was in error.
It is good to hear confirmation that this is not what they were doing.
Jay
@JaySinWA:
It wasn’t an error, vatnick’s don’t post in error.
Rathskeller
I cannot read the paywalled FT link, but here’s a similar article he wrote on changes in tactics.
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/meatgrinder-russian-tactics-second-year-its-invasion-ukraine
One paragraph was especially startling:
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: Apparently the decision to allow cluster munition export to Ukraine was driven more by their stockpile abundance than by any differential utility over unitary munitions. It seems to have had a considerable effect on the Ukrainian rate of fire.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m tracking. I think the question was in good faith.
Alison Rose
@Kelly: LOL true. Maybe he was giving them tips ;)
Maxim
@Alison Rose:
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, that was it. Thanks!
Carlo Graziani
@Rathskeller:
This, if true, speaks to incompetent cryptological practice. It should still not be possible to simply “solve” modern 256-bit encryption schemes in real time, whether by brute-force or by cryptanalysis. So if the Russians are succeeding at it in real time (or close enough to defeat moving drones) that means either a catastrophic weakness in the encryption scheme or (more likely) a shitty implementation that leaves the system open to side-channel attacks that recover encryption keys by exploiting incompetent key management, or other broken aspects of cryptologic practice unrelated to the scheme itself.
This would almost certainly never happen with a dedicated military drone. So it is likely a matter of shoddy commercial practice—the origin of almost all widespread computer vulnerabilities.
Anonymous At Work
@JaySinWA: What I’ve seen is pre-dawn or late night attacks on businesses, rather than civilian homes/apartments. Almost nil chance of civilians in the line but shows Moscow as vulnerable.
Tony G
@Alison Rose: Christie was a horrible governor and is generally a horrible human being who was hated by most New Jersey residents — but he is not horrible enough to succeed in the present-day Republican Party. He has no influence in the party and is going nowhere in the party.
Tony G
@Kelly: God, I hate Christie. It has been largely forgotten at this point, but A WOMAN DIED during the “Bridgegate” prank because her ambulance was stuck in traffic on the way to a hospital emergency room. In an alternate universe in which the United States has a functioning justice system, Christie would be serving a life sentence without parole in prison.
Omnes Omnibus
@Carlo Graziani:
They used “PaSSWORD1#” as their password?
Carlo Graziani
@Omnes Omnibus: Or someone’s mother’s maiden name..
However, a good possibility seems like invariant keys across the drone fleet, which can be recovered after capturing one drone with its electronics intact, by examining its memory.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: If that is the reason then I am afraid it may not last, since most NATO countries have probably stopped producing cluster munitions.
I think the Ukrainian artillery advantage is mostly due to superior targeting/accuracy/range of the most modern Western systems/munitions, making up for the disadvantage in volume. The limit here remains the qty of systems/munitions that Western countries can provide.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: Kofman’s estimate was that provision of cluster munition from US stocks would permit elevated rates of fire through some time in September.
Bill Arnold
@Rathskeller:
Does anyone know of more details on this? I.e., are there reports of a technical attack involved, or is it said to be something like capture of equipment by enemy forces, then not re-keying the remaining equipment quickly because it’s inconvenient? Or key expiration and then some units talking in the clear?
(Meanwhile, digging into it.)
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
@Bill Arnold:
The Motorola’s are commercial off the shelf systems, “walki talkies”,
The encryption and frequency jumping is designed, not to defeat EW systems, but instead, prevent cross chatter for recreational users, (eg. baby monitors).
So you and your partner can talk to each other with out other users listening in or your radio getting flooded by every one else taking on a radio in the same frequency.
They are not designed to be a robust EW “proof” system, but instead, designed to use frequency jumping and other minor exploits to allow communication in what is becoming a more “traffic jammed” set of frequencies.
Carlo Graziani
@Bill Arnold: The RUSI report by Watling and Reynolds is actually a relatively long pdf document linked to by the page cited in #28 by @Rathskeller. On the subject of EW, the web summary appears to have somewhat bowdlerized the actual report, which actually says this:
The footnotes themselves are not that informative, as they refer not to other documents, but rather to unpublished research by the authors on the ground in Ukraine. Nonetheless, it is clear that the break had to do with comms radios, and not with UAVs. So it looks as if the confusing conflation of voice comms with UAV comms was a product of bad paragraphing in the web summary.
(And possibly I was the only hasty reader who was confused by this).
NutmegAgain
@Jay: Brilliant! But, [they’re] gonna need a bigger boat.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
If they’re P25 radios, then they can do encryption, and can be secure if used correctly, unless there is a technical attack that Russians are exploiting.
This is old (2011/2016) but covers some of the issues (at the time), though it focuses on civilian use:
P25 Security Mitigation Guide
(Matt Blaze, Sandy Clark, Travis Goodspeed, Perry Metzger, Zachary Wasserman, Kevin Xu, 10 August 2011 (Last Updated 12 December 2016))
Bill Arnold
@Carlo Graziani:
Thanks. That’s much more useful. Now poking around for that unpublished research.
ETA: Russian EW tech can be scary effective, and Russian EW engineers should be respected, as adversaries.
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
the key to using the Motorola’s and other commercial brands in a EW area, is irregular switching schedules. You lock your comms in on a setting, and do an 8 hour patrol, and yeah, in hour 1 the EW system is going to pinpoint your location. In an hour 2, they are going to hear everything that is said.
So on irregular but predetermined intervals, you switch the encryption and the start frequency, ( it should be every half hour or less).
The advantage of the Motorola’s and other similar systems, (which can often talk to each other) is they are hands free, push to talk, and $65 for a set, while being some what secure, if you follow comms protocol in an EW setting.
They allow communication among the squad, up to higher command and other units, at a $2807 savings over dedicated military portable radios with more robust EW protections that are still crackable.
Bill Arnold
@Carlo Graziani:
The RUSI report uses the term”EW effectors”‘; a google time window search suggests that that usage is only a few years old.
Might be borrowed from the The Culture novels/stories/Iain M. Banks. (“effectors” goes back further than a few years in robotics, though.)
Carlo Graziani
@Jay: This issue has nothing whatever to do with hacks like frequency-jumping. Certainly there is no “switching encryption”—that doesn’t even make sense.
The report specifically mentions decrypting comms that were encrypted by 256-bit (presumably AES) encryption. This is simply not possible by direct attacks on the cipher system. It is necessarily a consequence of bad implementation or bad security practice, or some combination thereof.
The point is that almost all cryptological failures nowadays are the result of attacks on side-channels such as the key-management system. Which is itself vulnerable to both manufacturer error and user error.
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
They are P25’s and newer models.
The thing is, the Orc’s EW can find the transmission with in an hour.
Because they are commercial units, the EW suites can in hour or two, crack the encryption, because it’s not random, it’s a fixed setting.
The safe way to use them is to change the start frequency and the encryption settings several times an hour, with everybody on the comms network, doing it at the same irregular time.
Eg. 8:07 am, 8:41am, 9:11am, etc.
Carlo Graziani
@Jay: No.
There is no “cracking” of 256-bit AES in “a few hours”. That’s just not a thing.
BeautifulPlumage
Completely OT:
DOJ Seeks Protective Order After Trump’s ‘I’m Coming After You’ Post
Via Daily Beast via Kyle Cheney Xcrement
Anoniminous
@Bill Arnold:
“Effektor” is a term used by Jakob von Uexküll in his book “Theoretische Biologie.” Verlag von Gebrüder Paetel, Berlin 1920.
Leto
@Carlo Graziani: shhh, shhh, let’ ‘em keep talking. This is hilarious.
Freemark
Pretty sure the official Russian press release about the hit on the landing ship was, ‘Tis but a scratch’.
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
So the Motorola’s and other brands, which have been available for 30 years on the commercial/retail markets, have two “nodes”.
The first is “frequency jumping”. They chop the conversation up across a set range of frequencies in bites of a little as 5 seconds, before jumping to the next frequency. Because the set you are talking to is set to the same setting, it frequency jumps ate the exact same second, you have a seamless conversation. But there are only so many frequencies used, only so many setting and if you buy a set off the shelf, you can reverse engineer the jumps and program them into your EW suite, because you have a much bigger and more powerful computer.
The same for the “encryption”. There is a choice of 10 encryption settings, all fixed from the factory and all the same settings for the past 30 years.
These are not NATO standard military radio systems. They are commercial, off the shelf systems, that use preprogrammed frequency jumping and encryption so that Mom and Pop out hiking can talk to each other “privately”, with out hearing all the spam from other people out in the outdoors clogging up their channel.
Think of a baby monitor. If you are within 1500 yards of similar make and model, (and not always that) of another baby monitor, your baby monitor will pick up everything thier’s broadcasts.
Again, these are commercial, recreational units, not military, and the frequency jumping and encryption is not designed to defeat modern EW systems, it’s designed to allow you and your partner to communicate at up to 15km range, (dependent on terrain), with some privacy from other users.
Bill Arnold
@Anoniminous:
Interesting; thanks! Is that image from an online copy?
ETA found source: Jakob von Uexküll: l’Umwelt dell’animale (Ivana Randazzo, 9 Aprile 2011, google translate works)
Anoniminous
@Bill Arnold:
I scraped it from an Italian website because I was being lazy.
Here is a link so you can download Kull’s introductory paper in English with a discussion and, possibly, since von Uexkull was a Biologist more Biology than you care to consume. :-)
YY_Sima Qian
The Russian landing ship made it to the pier, so probably not a total loss, but will be out of action for many years, given the dearth of Russian ship repairs capability, especially in the Black Sea.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: This reminds me of something I wondered about: why would the Ukrainians bother to send a drone 600 km to target an old landing ship? Does that vessel have any other naval usefulness?
Eolirin
@Carlo Graziani: That’s kind of pedantic as long as the keys aren’t random, which seems to be the case here. You can absolutely do a brute force attack to find the encryption key, if that space is a lot smaller than the total possible key space. You’re not technically cracking the encryption, but it’s close enough for non-techincal conversation.
Sebastian
@Rathskeller:
I would like to see confirmation of realtime decryption of 256bit because this seems like a very tall tale.
Sebastian
@Carlo Graziani:
The jetski drones have a range of only 60-70km. The Ukrainians must have tested a method to bring the drones within operational range.
Sebastian
@Jay:
Thank you for the explainer, Jay. This makes a lot more sense.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
Adam, thanks for answering my question. I appreciate your framing it via the Just War Theory. Back when I was teaching an undergrad course in Ethics, I used that same theory to examine our invasion of Iraq. At the time I was of the opinion that our invasion was not ethical or legal based on what I had read in the 9/11 Commission Report since there were no ties to Al Qaeda and no real WMD evidence found. My students, who for the most part felt the opposite, always came back to “But Saddam has WMD.” So I then asked, “What does WMD have to do with 9/11?” and more importantly, ‘What if the US Govt is lying about the WMD?” And lo and behold, it was a lie. I wonder how many of those students even remember that lesson or anything about the Just War Theory 20+ years on. I think your and @Omnes Omnibus arguments and conclusions are correct. Unfortunately, Russia and their useful idiots around the world will try to make political hay out of the drone strikes within Russia anyway. So it’s the political question and how Ukraine can push back against such propaganda that remains on my mind. Thanks again.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, I was thinking the same thing. It occurred to me that if my country had been subjected to the horrors that the Ukraine has, I would definitely not have been that restrained. I wasn’t actually questioning the legality or ethics of those strikes so much as I was the pushback that I’m hearing from others. Like @Alison Rose was saying, she’s heard it too.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Carlo Graziani:
@Rathskeller:
As a 30+ year IT pro, I second this. It’s shoddy key security or potentially even just good old fashioned social engineering…not a true ability to break that level of encryption. If they could break that level of encryption so much (banking, private data, governmental secrets, etc.) around the world would be absolutely screwed (to the point of catastrophe due to Russian r@tf@ckery).
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: It was probably a target of opportunity. I think a number of drones were launched at Novorossiysk. I am sure the Ukrainians would have preferred to sink/damage one of the corvettes that have been launching cruise missiles at Ukraine, but the other drones might not have made it into the better protected interior of the naval base.
Geminid
@Carlo Graziani: I read that Russia has been using the ship to transport supplies to Crimea. Maybe not a lot of supplies, but they still might miss it if and when the Kerch Bridge is knocked out.
JR
@Bill Arnold: Effector is a term occasionally used in biochemistry. It might be a lease-back after borrowing “buffer” from the military over a hundred years ago.
oldster
“Some actually have a third set of conditions – Jus Post Bello – for the ethical requirements post conflict termination.”
And some add a fourth set, “Bellum Au Jus,” also known as “French Diplomacy.”
Torrey
@oldster:
Y’know, you could have gone all day without making that pun.
But I’m glad you didn’t. :)
Carlo Graziani
@oldster: I must have the recipe!