Ukraine Invasion: Part 27

[MagicFox]

27th thread, thanks for the continued company and analysis all

From the Guardian:
Ukraine needs 60 multiple rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia, according to an aide to the country’s presidency.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to the president’s chief of staff, told the Guardian that while he believed the rocket launchers were “a gamechanger weapon”, not enough had been committed to turn the tide in the war.

“The fewer we get, the worse our situation will be. Our troops will continue to die and we will continue to lose ground,” Arestovych said, particularly if countries with dozens of systems only “decide to donate four or five”.

Someone speaking on Radio 4 Today programme was saying the same: that the few they are being sent will really not be a game-changer. I think there may be a problem for the U.K. in that we don’t have that many ourselves. But it is a lot more than 4 I think.

This is the link to that article:

Ukraine needs many more rocket launchers from west, says adviser | Ukraine | The Guardian

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/06/ukraine-needs-many-more-rocket-launchers-from-west-says-adviser
amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/06/ukraine-needs-many-more-rocket-launchers-from-west-says-adviser

@notimagain sorry for not addressing you earlier.

I’m reading some Polish news, obviously the French supply of the weaponry has missed my scattered brain.
There was quite a lot about about Germany delaying the deliveries of weapons.

Excuse my ignorance (and large glass of wine on Saturday😳)

I’ll get my coat and shut up

I'll try not to do a TL;DR.... As you say markings aren't much if any use.. so it's mainly but not always a case of identification electronically.

I'm not sure what goes on at a high level in these days of networking and fancy radio techniques but the basic method was and still is in some cases a system called "Identification, Friend or Foe" (IFF).

The aircraft will have radio transmitter that sends out a coded reply instantly if it is "pinged" by a radio interrogator carried by another fighter aircraft or missile system on the ground - even small man portable systems as Stinger have a built in interrogator. The actual reply code sent out from the aircraft (originally a string of 4 digits, there's no doubt more embedded now ) can be changed as required usually via a control panel in the cockpit.

If the missile system gets a code it recognises as friendly it'll feed that back to the operator....if it's get no reply or one that it doesn't recognise as friendly than that gets fed back and the operator has a decision to make....

FWIW basic IFF is the ancestor of the system that these days provides data for Air Traffic control and is also what provides the info for the flight tracker apps such as flightradar.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe

Thank you very much for that explanation about friend-or-foe recognition systems for planes@notimagain

How would it have happened then that pro-Russians/Russians shot down the passenger plane over Ukraine especially as it wouldn’t have looked like a fighter jet?

Presumably the correct radios and codes are not always available, or are being operated by people who don’t understand them?

Sorry@notimagain I have now read the wiki article about IFF which answers my question about the shot down civilian plane:

“such as civilian airliners, will not be equipped with IFF.”

That seems to be rather a bad idea imo.

Also the smart, well equipped operator shown in a photograph in the article may be an ideal rather than always possible in practice.

Civilian aircraft aren't equipped with all the knobs and bells ( for example encryption) that comes with military style IFF, but they are equipped with the basic transponder (the onboard transmitter receiver element of the system) and do fly around sending out a code, usually allocated to that specific flight by civilian Air Traffic Control, if "pinged"...

In general AFAIK the military can see the code the civilian aircraft is sending out and in a civilised system the military would be liaising with each other, in some large centres mil/civil controls sit at adjacent desks.

How would it have happened then that pro-Russians/Russians shot down the passenger plane over Ukraine especially as it wouldn’t have looked like a fighter jet?

Because they wanted to shoot down a passenger aircraft.

The Malaysian 777 was on a published airway (albeit perhaps not the most sensible to be on given the conflict) at airliner cruising altitude in straight and level flight at airliner speeds...I don't think being able or unable to read civilian transponder codes was ever a factor in that shoot down.

The missile crew must have known simply from the flight path that there was a very high level of probability that they were engaging a civilian target.....in fact they may even have even been evil enough read the codes to confirm it was a civilian aircraft before shooting it down.

A question that has been with me for months - is it possible that the pilot of the plane that bombed the Mariupol theatre might have not seen the markings of 'children' on the pavements?

It's extremely clear he was told to bomb civilian targets and given the culture of lies I wonder if he was told that military were in that building. I'm quite sure that's what he'd say and it might or might not be true.

But he might not have seen the actual markings on the pavement if he was too fast?

Thanks for the new thread.

Ukraine war: EU blames Russia for food crisis prompting walkout

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61714234

According to this report "All morning, Russian planes had been circling the skies above the city" on the day of the Mariupol theatre bombing.

"Mariia also remembers military planes "making circles" near the theatre that morning, and "throwing bombs somewhere else". But it was not unusual for her to spot military planes flying in the area. She had got used to their sound."

A bomb hit this theatre hiding hundreds - here's how one woman survived
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60835106

Charles Michel tells it exactly like it is, not a shred of pusillanimity. Good man.

But he might not have seen the actual markings on the pavement if he was too fast?

IMHO I'd say if we are talking about low level delivery of bombs from level flight from a low flying fixed wing aircraft travelling at high speed it's highly highly likely the pilot involved couldn't read the markings.

Russia blames the West for not letting them do what they want in Ukraine, shocker

Aka the big bully complaining when someone else comes to the help of the little guy they were trying to bully - and then blaming all the damage on the wee guy because they had the temerity to ask for help and not just give in to the bullying

I cheered Charles Michel when I read that. Coming from the President of the European Security Council to boot. He did not mince words.

"His comments led to [Russian envoy] Mr Nebenzia storming out. As he left, Mr Michel addressed him directly: "You may leave the room, maybe it's easier not to listen to the truth".

huh. So he probably didn't see them but planes had been around all day.

Comes under the heading of 'if you don't want to hurt people, don't throw bombs at their buildings'

V true regarding throwing bomb at buildings, been a feature of this war.

On the subject of throwing I think (for completeness rather than excuses) I should point out if it was a bomb/bombs, especially precision guided versions it's possible they were tossed towards the target from several kilometres away so the pilot(s) will never have overflown the building.

That might just but possibly doesn't also explain the "throwing bombs somewhere else" comment.

on EM interference:

twitter.com/Osinttechnical

OSINTtechnical
@Osinttechnical
·
25m
Downed Russian Orlan-10 10330, lack of damage indicates that it was taken down through EW means.

Awful conditions and lack of rotation for both sides, but at least the Ukrainian army know what they're fighting for, hopefully the Russian army morale is hitting rock bottom.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/07/exhausted-russian-fighters-complain-of-conditions-in-eastern-ukraine?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Medvedev's son has been deported from the USA

The Pentagon has studied the equipment of the invaders seized in Ukraine and came to the conclusion that the "advanced" Russian weapons and communications systems are based on Western chips, writes NYT.

Or...... Somebody in the Pentagon finally renewed their subscription to RUSI, caught up on their reading from couple of months back and noted pages 10-12 and also the Annex of this report:

static.rusi.org/special-report-202204-operation-z-web.pdf

This tweet is about a new NYT article ( included) about how Ukrainians cannot use high-tech US equipment because they can’t understand it without training. Also hints at/ includes an unfair comparison to the Afghan army.

The tweet writer and replies are upset by how trouble making for Ukraine this article could be. Another possibly worm in the bud one.

I thought military people here might be interested.

twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1534093327624245248?s=20&t=JQGCpkbAO7y8fyxnIl86sw

I’m a bit late commenting on this new thread, finally caught up with it. Earlier in the thread there were some discussions about Russian speaking Ukrainians.
I’ve been thinking about this myself a lot lately. I’m a Russian speaking Ukrainian, although I have now lived in the U.K. for over 20 years, so I rarely speak Russian to anyone here. I still speak it to my family but they all live abroad. I’ve not seen them since before covid. I don’t know what we will do when we meet again and talk to each other in public. I think it would feel super awkward for us to communicate in Ukrainian with each other, but if other people speak to us in Ukrainian we would be happy to reply in Ukrainian.

I must admit, ever since the Russian invasion i have myself felt triggered when I hear Russians speaking here (you can tell by the accent)

And someone aslo mentioned that Russian and Ukrainian are similar. In my experience people from Russia who’ve never been to Ukraine/ have no family ties there rarely understand Ukrainian. Linguistically, I’d say Ukrainian is closer to Polish than Russian although of course some words are same/ similar and Ukrainians also use cyrillic. Interestingly, in the western Ukraine, Lviv in particular, which was a part of Austro Hungarian empire / Poland over different periods of time in history, they used Latin alphabet until they were added to USSR in 1939 (as a part of a deal between Hitler and Stalin.

finally the point someone made comparing Wales to Ukraine … I see where you were coming from. Personally I would say Scotland and Ukraine are probably more similar in their plight for independence from the neighbouring empires, having their own history, culture, language … even down to things like national clothing being banned over some periods in their histories.

And one more thing, I found it fascinating just how much Boris Johnson is loved by Ukrainians at the moment. Lots and lots of comments on Ukrainian telegram channels that I follow expressing Ukrainians relief and gratitude that he was not voted out last night. I think a lot of people in this country would have swapped Boris for Zelensky in a heartbeat- there is truly no prophet in his own land eh?

I think it's a pretty decent article.

Right from day one it's been clear many who have never served in the military seriously underestimate (for quite understandable reasons) how complex of lot of equipment is, not just aircraft but tanks, guns, rocket systems etc, and even as the article points out smaller stuff such as range finders.

That's led sometime to a lack of appreciation of what is involved in the way of very specific training to operate a lot of the machinery.

What's important here is by operate I mean not just getting something to go bang when pointing in the right direction, I mean using it on the battle field in a manner that means you are hitting targets and operators and equipment are surviving more than a couple of engagements. That can take a lot of training.

I don't think we're going to see parallels with what happened to equipment in Afghanistan, from what I've seen the Ukrainians tend to be very tech savvy, but if they've only done a very brief training course or perhaps none at all I'm also not surprised they've had to resort to Google.....

@Mb76 · Today 22:00
It is so good to hear your perspective coming as it does from direct experience.

Nearer the start of the war a Ukrainian who is an academic in London came on to Radio 4 Today programme. He is a Russian speaking Ukrainian like you. He said that to him now, speaking Ukrainian feels like an invitation to be invaded, so he has been switching to Ukrainian.

I can understand why they love Boris in Ukraine. He has conveyed a spirit of whole heartedness to Ukraine and he is charismatic. I think anyone wanting to keep him, mention Ukraine as a reason. But everything is slippery with him, and not always what it seems.