[Roosta]

Good write up about Zelensky that outlines what it takes to get the job done & he's done a top job IMO bringing his ppl together to fight this murderous oppression & it's well & truly been shown to the russians that they, the Ukrainian ppl are not to be fucked with.
Over in 3 days,

[WonderMomma]

NO MEDIA:

"Saint Javelin (https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/sta...04583565336756) on the importance of the defense of Avdiyivka.

ℹ️ Due to the recent local successes of the Russian army near Avdiivka, some mistakenly underestimate the strategic importance of an important industrial city. People compare him to Bakhmut and believe that focusing on Avdiivka is a misuse of Ukrainian resources.

Reality prepares a different picture for us, and here's why:

ℹ️ First, Avdiivka turned into one of the most fortified areas of the front in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. Its defensive structures, including underground tunnels, concrete bunkers and many other barriers, make it much more difficult for the enemy to advance.

ℹ️ The resilience of Avdiivka and the resources used by the Russian army in its attempts to capture the city speak for themselves. Since 2022, Avdiivka has been the target of attacks, but the actual gains of the occupying forces are insignificant.

ℹ️ Avdiivka is of strategic importance , as it is a bridgehead for a potential offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the direction of Donetsk and Makiivka. The artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine can effectively fire at key areas of Donetsk, where arsenals and places of deployment of enemy troops are "mixed" with civilian houses.

ℹ️ The loss of Avdiivka creates a significant gap in the defense line, as Pokrovsk is the next important defensive node about 40 km away.

ℹ️ Although there are several fortified villages between Avdiyivka and Pokrovsk, the strategy of the Russian army often involves storming these positions with a numerical force popularly known as a "meat grinder".

ℹ️ The Russians have enough armored vehicles to sustain a gradual offensive for at least another year. They don't count people.

ℹ️ Ukraine is at a disadvantage in terms of resources, in terms of personnel, and in terms of military equipment. The risk that the Russian army will gain additional advantages by using such "meat" tactics is worrisome.

ℹ️ We do not push and do not claim that Avdiyivka is on the verge of capture. We simply emphasize its strategic importance, which is significantly different from Bakhmut, which was a disposal point for the "Wagner" PMC, and nothing more.

ℹ️ To summarize, today we have 160+ Russian losses in equipment against 8 Ukrainian ones. Both sides make a limited advance, only 1-2 km deep into the front line.

ℹ️ Ammunition and artillery are of prime importance for defense in such conditions. According to the military on the ground, the cluster munitions are causing significant damage to the occupiers, although it cannot yet completely relieve the pressure.

ℹ️ We hope that the international allies understand the situation and are ready to provide the necessary resources to protect this critically important section of the front. At times like these, having enough artillery shells can be crucial"

======

Video:

"The Bundeswehr publishes a video on the training of the Ukrainian military for naval affairs.

Military personnel are taught to prevent physical damage to the ship, firefighting, use of special rescue equipment, etc.

At training courses close to real situations, Ukrainian recruits learned the skills necessary for survival in the event of emergency situations on board."

[WonderMomma]

Source (paywall): https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/01/ukraines-top-general-on-the-breakthrough-he-needs-to-beat-russia


Ukraine’s top general on the breakthrough he needs to beat Russia
General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is at a stalemate
Nov 1st 2023

Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometres”. Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable–and thus change Vladimir Putin’s calculations, forcing the Russian president to negotiate. It has also undercut General Zaluzhny’s assumption that he could stop Russia by bleeding its troops. “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.” But not in Russia, where life is cheap and where Mr Putin’s reference points are in the first and second world wars in which Russia lost tens of millions.

An army of Ukraine’s standard ought to have been able to move at a speed of 30km a day as it breached Russian defensive lines. “If you look at nato’s text books and at the maths which we did [in planning the counter-offensive], four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” General Zaluzhny says sardonically. Instead he watched his troops and equipment get stuck in minefields on the approaches to Bakhmut in the east, his Western-supplied equipment getting pummelled by Russian artillery and drones. The same story unfolded on the offensive’s main thrust, in the south, where newly formed and inexperienced brigades, despite being equipped with modern Western kit, immediately ran into trouble.

“First I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” says General Zaluzhny. When those changes failed to make a difference, the commander told his staff to dig out a book he once saw as a student in a military academy in Ukraine. Its title was “Breaching Fortified Defence Lines”. It was published in 1941 by a Soviet major-general, P. S. Smirnov, who analysed the battles of the first world war. “And before I got even halfway through it, I realised that is exactly where we are because just like then, the level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor.”

That thesis, he says, was borne out as he went to the front line in Avdiivka, also in the east, where Russia has recently advanced by a few hundred metres over several weeks by throwing in two of its armies. “On our monitor screens the day I was there we saw 140 Russian machines ablaze—destroyed within four hours of coming within firing range of our artillery.” Those fleeing were chased by “first-person-view” drones, remote-controlled and carrying explosive charges that their operators simply crash into the enemy. The same picture unfolds when Ukrainian troops try to advance. General Zaluzhny describes a battlefield in which modern sensors can identify any concentration of forces, and modern precision weapons can destroy it. “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other,” he says.

This time, however, the decisive factor will be not a single new invention, but by combining all the technical solutions that already exist, he says. In an article (paywall) written for The Economist by General Zaluzhny, as well as in a full-length essay shared with the newspaper, he urges innovation in drones, electronic warfare, anti-artillery capabilities and de-mining equipment, including new robotic solutions. “We need to ride the power embedded in new technologies,” says the general.

Western allies have been overly cautious in supplying Ukraine with their latest technology and more powerful weapons. Joe Biden, America’s president, set objectives at the start of Russia’s invasion: to ensure that Ukraine was not defeated and that America was not dragged into confrontation with Russia. This means that arms supplied by the West have been sufficient in sustaining Ukraine in the war, but not enough to allow it to win. General Zaluzhny is not complaining: “They are not obliged to give us anything, and we are grateful for what we have got, but I am simply stating the facts.”

But by holding back the supply of long-range missile systems and tanks, the West allowed Russia to regroup and build up its defences in the aftermath of a sudden breakthrough in Kharkiv region in the north and in Kherson in the south late in 2022. “These systems were most relevant to us last year, but they only arrived this year,” he says. Similarly, f-16 jets, due next year, are now less helpful, suggests the general, in part because Russia has improved its air defences: an experimental version of the s-400 missile system can reach beyond the city of Dnipro, he warns.

Yet the delay in arms deliveries, though frustrating, is not the main cause of Ukraine’s predicament, according to General Zaluzhny. “It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” he insists. “They will inevitably lead to delay and, as a consequence, defeat.” It is, instead, technology that will be decisive, he argues. The general is enthused by recent conversations with Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, and stressed the decisive role of drones, and of electronic warfare which can prevent them from flying.

General Zaluzhny’s assessment is sobering: there is no sign that a revolutionary technological breakthrough, whether in drones or in electronic warfare, is around the corner. And technology has its limits. Even in the first world war, the arrival of tanks, in 1917, was not sufficient to break the deadlock on the battlefield: it took a suite of technologies, and more than a decade of tactical innovation, to produce the German blitzkrieg in May 1940. The implication is that Ukraine is stuck in a long war—one in which he acknowledges Russia has the advantage. Nevertheless, he insists that Ukraine has no choice but to keep the initiative by remaining on the offensive, even if it only moves by a few metres a day.

Crimea, he believes, remains Mr Putin’s greatest vulnerability. It is the linchpin of his imperial restoration project, and his legitimacy rests on having brought it back to Russia. Over the past few months, Ukraine has taken the war into the peninsula Mr Putin annexed in 2014 and which remains critical to the logistics of his war. “It must know that it is part of Ukraine and that this war is happening there.” On October 30th Ukraine struck Crimea with American-supplied long-range atacms missiles for the first time.

General Zaluzhny is desperately trying to prevent the war from settling into the trenches. “The biggest risk of an attritional trench war is that it can drag on for years and wear down the Ukrainian state,” he says. In the first world war, mutinies interfered before technology could make a difference. Four empires collapsed and a revolution broke out in Russia.

A collapse in Ukrainian morale and Western support is precisely what Mr Putin is counting on. There is no question in General Zaluzhny’s mind that a long war favours Russia, a country with a population three times and an economy ten times the size of Ukraine’s. “Let’s be honest, it’s a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life. And for us…the most expensive thing we have is our people,” he says. For now, General Zaluzhny says, he has enough soldiers. But the longer the war goes on, the harder it will be to sustain. “We need to look for this solution, we need to find this gunpowder, quickly master it and use it for a speedy victory. Because sooner or later we are going to find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight.”

[WonderMomma]

"Prigozhin’s son became the new head of the Wagner PMC, - Russian media.

In Perm, recruitment into the ranks of mercenaries was resumed, and a group led by 25-year-old Pavel Prigozhin allegedly became part of the Russian Guard.

Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is my dad?"

Ukraine has invented an electronic war system to protect armored vehicles from FPV drone attacks.

Read more here.

"Demonstration of the Piranha AVD 360 armoured vehicle protection system against enemy UAVs.

The system creates a protective dome up to 600 metres around the vehicle. Under the influence of the system, a copter or a kamikaze drone cannot receive commands or transmit data. As a result, the drone either hovers in the air, makes an emergency landing, or falls uncontrollably.

Piranha also jams satellite navigation systems, such as Russia's GLONASS. The system has now successfully passed field tests and is ready for mass production."

[Roosta]

Wont be long before Poo Tin gets all paranoid & throws him out a window.

[kellyhound]

Russia's Wagner is on the verge of getting involved in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. officials are worried that Wagner might send the SA-22 (Pantsir-S1) air defence system to help Hezbollah in its fight against Israel from Lebanon. The report added that no such transfer has happened till now and American officials are keeping close watch on the conversations between Hezbollah and Wagner. Both militias are already working closely in Syria to help bolster Syrian dictator's rule.

[kellyhound]

After the death of PVK Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russia is creating a new structure that will take over extensive operations in Africa

The Wall Street Journal published a diagram:
▪️ "Wagnerivets" in Africa were replaced by two other private military companies - "Redut" and "Convoy".
▪️These companies are financed by friends of Putin — Gennady Timchenko and Arkady Rottenberg.
▪️Deputy Minister of Defense Yunus-Bek Yevkurov heads the structure responsible for Russian operations in Africa.
▪️ GRU official Andrii Aver'yanov controls the activity.

At the end of August and in September, Yevkurov visited Libya, Burkina Faso, Mali and the Central African Republic. Together with him, Aver'yanov and the commander of the Redoubt Kostyantyn Mirzayants were spotted. "Convoy" is headed by Kostyantyn Pikalov, who previously managed the military operations of the "Wagners" in Africa.

[houseoftechno]

Originally Posted by WonderMomma ↗

Ukraine has invented an electronic war system to protect armored vehicles from FPV drone attacks.

Read more here.

"Demonstration of the Piranha AVD 360 armoured vehicle protection system against enemy UAVs.

The system creates a protective dome up to 600 metres around the vehicle. Under the influence of the system, a copter or a kamikaze drone cannot receive commands or transmit data. As a result, the drone either hovers in the air, makes an emergency landing, or falls uncontrollably.

Piranha also jams satellite navigation systems, such as Russia's GLONASS. The system has now successfully passed field tests and is ready for mass production."

I figure the current wars are going to show and escalate the drone and anti-drone tech (EMP, jamming) that have been classified to this point. They are a good source of R&D feedback.

Kind of like the highway radar detector tech wars of 50 years ago, but more lethal now.

[houseoftechno]

I suspect foot units are most vulnerable because sustained EMP/jamming defense requires a power supply you can't carry, except possibly nuke power cells.

[RedactedKaos]

Does anyone know if any units are equipped with masterkeys to help with drones?