Archives for 2024

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Quick housekeeping note: Ruby is back to her normal self. Rosie is still doing well. She goes for her next chemo treatment tomorrow, so I’ll have more to info on her condition tomorrow evening. Thank you to everyone for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations. They are all most welcome.

Iranian President Raisi, as well as Iran’s Foreign Minister and several other Iranian officials, are all still missing as a result of an emergency hard landing by Raisi’s helicopter earlier today. The weather was bad when it went down and has gotten worse ever since. Rescue crews from Iran are on site and Turkey, and Russia are assisting in various ways. From all credible reports the helicopter made a hard landing, but people on board, such as the prayer leader from Tabriz, had been in contact with Iranian authorities. The biggest concerns at this point are because of the weather and the terrain. It is cold, damp, the rain has turned to snow, and those on the downed helicopter are in forested mountains.

Your daily Baykraktar:

BREAKING — Turkey’s Bayraktar Akinci drone detected a heat source, which is thought to be the wreckage of the helicopter carrying the Iranian President Raisi, and shared its coordinates with the Iranian authorities, Anadolu reports pic.twitter.com/HqI77lH8UM

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) May 20, 2024

 

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One of the reasons that Russia was able to make some initial quick gains in Kharkiv Oblast is because they had worked out a way to jam the Ukrainian’s Starlinks!

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1791764421309542539

The Washington Post has the details: (emphasis mine)

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russia’s new offensive across Ukraine’s northeastern border had been expected for months — yet it still surprised the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to defend against it.

Ukraine’s 125th Territorial Defense Brigade — stretched thin along a roughly 27-mile stretch of the Kharkiv region’s border with Russia — used reconnaissance drones to monitor, daily, how Moscow was steadily building up forces for a possible attack. But the morning it happened, May 10, the brigade lost all its video feeds due to Russian electronic jamming.

Its Starlink devices — satellite internet the Ukrainian military relies on for basic communication — failed, the first time it was knocked out completely for them since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

“We were left at a certain point completely blind,” said a drone unit commander in the brigade. The Post agreed to identify him by his call sign, Artist, in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol.

“This was the biggest problem, we didn’t see how they were moving, we only worked through radio or through phones where they still worked,” Artist, a 53-year-old sergeant, said. The drone feeds, he said, “simply disappeared.”

But Russia’s battlefield gains in recent days were not only a result of Ukrainian shortfalls.

Begrudgingly, Ukrainian troops admit that their enemy has gotten smarter and adapted, especially with technological advancements such as electronic warfare — a sharp contrast with the first year of the invasion, when Russia’s own blunders and overconfidence allowed the Ukrainians to hold key cities and later liberate large swaths of territory in successful counteroffensives.

The new Russian advances, in Kharkiv and in the neighboring Donetsk region, have prompted questions about the viability of Ukraine’s defense — not only if Kyiv can fulfill its promise of expelling all invaders, but also if Russia will soon overpower Ukraine’s forces and seize more territory.

The latest assault on the Kharkiv border has forced Ukraine to redirect some reserves north, potentially imperiling other positions.

Even as they watched the Russians building up forces, Artist, the drone commander in the 125th Brigade, said the Ukrainians were largely unable to construct the kind of fortified defense lines now being emphasized by the government and by military commanders.

The Russians’ own layered web of “dragon’s teeth” antitank pyramid blocks, mines and concrete-reinforced trenches proved effective against Ukraine’s disappointing southeastern counteroffensive last summer.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky even visited the Kharkiv border in April to inspect the newly reinforced defenses. But Artist and other soldiers said that every time the units stationed here tried to build fortified lines, the Russians — using their own reconnaissance drones — would monitor their activity and fire on them.

Excavators and other engineering equipment were needed but not brought in because it would have been easily destroyed by the Russians.

Especially with the U.S. aid lagging, Ukrainian soldiers said they lacked the means to fire back and give themselves the time to build stronger defenses. The Ukrainians were also prohibited by the White House from using U.S.-provided weapons to strike Russia despite the Russians firing at them from across the border.

Artist said that soldiers in his unit would dig with shovels at night. “We tried to do what we could, but it’s not the same,” he said.

“Because the soil is very heavy here, it’s machines that can dig through that and machinery that can install concrete fortifications,” he added. “We weren’t able to do that. Ammunition, artillery could have protected us. … People would’ve been able to work in those moments. But sadly, we have wasted a lot. More than half a year has been wasted because we weren’t able to do this.”

More at the link!

There are two issues here. The first is that the Ukrainians rely on Starlink and if Starlink goes down, is jammed, or Musk decides to screw the Ukrainians, they are immediately at a disadvantage. The reliance on Starlink, which is facilitated by a very large DOD contract, has created a single point of failure. Right now it has led to Russian gains in Kharkiv. Over time it could lead to Russian gains elsewhere. It also demonstrates a strategic failure on the part of the DOD. Shoveling more money at Musk and his companies while treating him like a head of state isn’t going to solve enduring US defense problems. All it is going to do is create more singular points of failure.

The second issue is that we are continuing to see the effects of the congressional GOP’s intransigence and hostility towards Ukraine combined with the Biden administration’s strategic confusion regarding Ukraine ripple through time and space. We are back in for want of a nail territory. People are complaining of the failure of the Ukrainian MOD and general staff to ensure the layered defenses were emplaced. It is, of course, almost impossible to do that when you cannot defend your personnel trying to emplace them.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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War for Ukraine Day 816: Singular Points of Failure Will Fail at Inopportune TimesPost + Comments (20)