Category: War
Very degraded!
According to the Washington think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Russians have lost around one year’s supply of aircrafts, two years of tank production, and several years of missile production since they invaded Ukraine.
According to Bellingcat, they’ve lost around 70% of their precision missiles and that’s expensive to replace. With sanctions in place, not only can they not afford to replace their missiles, they cant even get access the parts they need in order to replace their other equipment, such as tanks and aircrafts.
They’ve lost over 15.000 soldiers, and their losses are so bad that Putin is likely to declare war on Ukraine very soon (he’ll likely do it on the 9th of May, which is the day the Russians celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany), so that he can draw manpower from the reserves. Not only that, but the Ukrainians are believed to have killed off around 12 of the 20 generals Russia committed to the invasion. A few days ago, the Russian army’s chief of staff Valery Gerasimov was injured when he visited the frontline in the Kharkiv region. Had he died then it would have been a catastrophic loss for Russia, symbolically speaking.
Russia has a large stockpile of old soviet era equipment, but nobody knows how well they’ve maintained their old equipment, and I’m not even sure their soldiers would know how to use such weapons. One thing is for sure, those weapons will be far less effective against anything the Ukrainians have.
Duffel Blog obtains top secret Russian military files
Russia’s military is apparently as leaky as SCOTUS
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By Task Force Football Bat
Duffel Blog’s team of investigative journalists has obtained a trove of sensitive Russian military documents that contain everything from Russian battle plans to LOL emojis shared between now-deceased generals. These documents shed light on inside conversations at the highest levels of leadership in the country’s military over the course of the past few months.
Our team of translators has analyzed what appears to be the Russian military’s detailed pre-invasion battle plan — briefed to President Putin as he clung for life to a table. Both the original and our translation are below.
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Our team also obtained more granular orders, apparently issued at the outset of the country’s latest incursion into a sovereign neighbor. One such order, translated below, gives insight into the Russians’ tactical prowess, which the world has feared for decades.
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Of course, these early plans did not materialize as successfully as Putin and his team of generals had envisioned. Leaked text messages from a few days into the full-scale invasion begin to tell the tale, while also giving an idea of the deep empathy Russian officers have for the troops they lead.
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Messages from the same chat roughly six weeks later give a sense of how the conflict has evolved.
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With the conflict persisting longer than hoped, Putin and his team are turning to the country’s robust information operations capability, looking to highlight what they see as key threats in Ukraine to both justify their actions and call on the West to halt its support of the Ukrainians as they defend themselves.
An undated press release cuts to the chase in classic Russian fashion.
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Duffel Blog is continuing to analyze and giggle at the large number of documents obtained.
1. Battleships
Once thought to be the cornerstone of naval power, the advent of Naval Aviation and the rise of the aircraft carrier in WWII was the beginning of the end for the large-gunned ships of the line. Though battleships saw continuous combat in WWII and Korea, the US Navy was left without an active battleship upon the decommissioning of the USS Wisconsin in March 1958; the first time since 1895.
Most military enthusiasts are familiar with the Reagan administration’s 600-ship Navy and the reactivation of the battleships USS Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin. USS New Jersey would be the first to fire her massive 16-inch guns at enemy targets again during the Lebanese Civil War from 1983-1984. USS Missouri and Wisconsin would return to combat in 1991 during the Gulf War. However, USS New Jersey was brought back into active service once before.
RELATED: HOW ONE ILL-ADVISED RADIO TRANSMISSION DOOMED THE BISMARCK
Following the beginning of Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965, the loss of US aircraft over Vietnam increased exponentially. The planes that took part in the sustained aerial bombardment campaign were exceptionally vulnerable to sophisticated Soviet-made surface-to-air weapon systems provided to the North Vietnamese.
In an effort to alleviate these air losses while still delivering ordnance payloads, USS New Jersey was brought out of mothballs in April 1968 and modernized for active service in Southeast Asia. The only active battleship in the world, New Jersey, joined the gun line off the Vietnamese coast on September 25. Five days later, she fired her first shots in over 16 years during an engagement against PAVN targets near the DMZ at the 17th parallel. She would go on to fire 14,891 5-inch shells and 5,688 16-inch shells during the war in support of ARVN, US and even Korean troops.
2. M14 Rifle
An evolution of the famed M1 Garand of WWII and Korea, the M14 battle rifle became the standard-issue rifle for the US military in 1959. Firing the 7.62x51mm NATO round, the M14 was meant to streamline logistics efforts by replacing the M1 Garand, M1903 Springfield, M1917 Enfield, M1 carbine, M3 submachine gun, M1928/M1 Thompson submachine gun, and M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. While the M14 exhibited outstanding accuracy and stopping power in its semi-automatic setting, its full-power cartridge was deemed too powerful for the submachine gun role and its light weight made it difficult to control during automatic fire as a light machine gun.
RELATED: THE 4 GUNS USED TO MAKE THE LONGEST SNIPER KILLS IN HISTORY
Though the M14 was replaced by the M16 as the standard-issue rifle in 1968, it found a new role as a precision rifle platform. It served as the basis of the M21 Sniper Weapon System introduced in 1968 and M25 Sniper Weapon System introduced in 1991. Though both weapon systems have been largely replaced by the M24 Sniper Weapon System, the M14 lives on as the Mk14 Enhanced Battle Rifle. Introduced in 2002, the Mk14 is a truer reincarnation of the M14. Where the M21 and M25 were restricted to semi-automatic fire, designated as Sniper Weapon Systems and saw more restricted issuance as a result, the Mk14 sees the return of selective fire, the designation as a battle rifle for both designated marksman and close combat roles, and issuance by the Army to two riflemen per infantry platoon deploying to Afghanistan.
3. Guns on fighter planes
With the advent of radar-guided and heat-seeking air-to-air missiles, like the AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder, and the new threat of high-altitude, long-range Soviet bombers, US air combat doctrine called for the elimination of gun armament on fighter-interceptor aircraft. Though dedicated attack and fighter aircraft like the A-4 Skyhawk, A-7 Corsair II and the F-8 Crusader retained 20mm cannons for ground attack and close-range aerial combat, interceptors like the F-86D Sabre, F-102 Delta Dagger and the F-4 Phantom II dispensed with any type of gun armament in favor of rockets and missiles. The idea during the late 50s and early 60s was that these types of aircraft would engage in long-range combat without visual contact of their target and, even if they did get close enough to see the enemy that the new Sidewinder missile would be able to dispense with a hostile fighter with ease.
RELATED: THIS IS WHY ADVANCED FIGHTERS STILL CARRY GUNS
This idea proved to be fatal for pilots over the skies of Vietnam. For Phantom II pilots in particular, who escorted bomber flights over North Vietnam, the lack of a gun often left them without offensive options during a dogfight. A Marine Corps General recalled, “Everyone in RF-4s wished we had a gun on the aircraft.” As any Top Gun fan can tell you, the American air-to-air kill ratio in Korea was 12:1. According to the US Naval Institute, the Navy’s kill ratio in Vietnam was just 2.5:1. The drop in kill ratio was attributed to poor missile accuracy at just 10% and lack of dogfighting skills. The latter resulted in the creation of TOPGUN while the former resulted in the addition of an external gun pod to the Phantom II. An internally mounted gun was incorporated on the later F-4E models.
Duffel Blog obtains top secret Russian military files
Russia’s military is apparently as leaky as SCOTUS
|
By Task Force Football Bat
Duffel Blog’s team of investigative journalists has obtained a trove of sensitive Russian military documents that contain everything from Russian battle plans to LOL emojis shared between now-deceased generals. These documents shed light on inside conversations at the highest levels of leadership in the country’s military over the course of the past few months.
Our team of translators has analyzed what appears to be the Russian military’s detailed pre-invasion battle plan — briefed to President Putin as he clung for life to a table. Both the original and our translation are below.
|
Our team also obtained more granular orders, apparently issued at the outset of the country’s latest incursion into a sovereign neighbor. One such order, translated below, gives insight into the Russians’ tactical prowess, which the world has feared for decades.
|
Of course, these early plans did not materialize as successfully as Putin and his team of generals had envisioned. Leaked text messages from a few days into the full-scale invasion begin to tell the tale, while also giving an idea of the deep empathy Russian officers have for the troops they lead.
|
Messages from the same chat roughly six weeks later give a sense of how the conflict has evolved.
|
With the conflict persisting longer than hoped, Putin and his team are turning to the country’s robust information operations capability, looking to highlight what they see as key threats in Ukraine to both justify their actions and call on the West to halt its support of the Ukrainians as they defend themselves.
An undated press release cuts to the chase in classic Russian fashion.
|
Duffel Blog is continuing to analyze and giggle at the large number of documents obtained.
Sorry guys but as a track guy, I would not wish this on anybody. As burns are the gift that keeps on giving! Grumpy
By W.E. Linde
MOSCOW — In the latest of a string of high-profile humiliations for the Russian military, a Ukrainian farmer was able to connect every single military vehicle participating in the country’s venerable Victory Day parade to his tractor and drag them back to Ukraine.
Petro Bonderenko, 53, a wheat and barley farmer from the village of Grushevka, appeared shortly after the parade began at 10 a.m., and somehow tied a chain that linked the approximately 200 military vehicles participating in this year’s event to his 210 horsepower John Deere tractor. Within 30 minutes, a confused silence had settled on Red Square, which was then completely devoid of any military armor or weapons.
“How did he even get there?” asked a visibly flummoxed Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff. “I was standing there in the reviewing stand saluting and suddenly saw some grizzled civilian in a crappy little tractor was in front of the procession, waving at me and President Putin.”
The “battlefield acquisition” became obvious to most when Bondarenko’s tractor made a sharp U-turn in front of Red Square, pulling the entire parade along behind him.
Sources indicate that although Putin was upset at the humiliating spectacle and initially demanded to know what was happening, his senior intelligence officials assured him that the parade was proceeding according to plan. Sufficiently reassured, Putin saluted Bonderenko as the farmer returned a one-finger salute.
David McSally, an analyst at Center for Strategic and International Studies, was not surprised that Bonderenko’s mission was successful.
“The Russians don’t trust their lower echelon troops, and so command and control is highly concentrated with senior leadership,” he explained. “So when no orders came down to stop this farmer, the troops in the vehicles just stayed along for the ride.”
“There’s also the likelihood that a lot of them were happy to go,” McSally added.
With the vehicle heist complete, talk has started about whether there will be consequences in the General Staff for letting Bonderenko get away.
“I don’t think President Putin is too mad,” Gerasimov said, sweating like he had just finished leveling an entire Ukrainian village by himself. “After all, he’s invited me to discuss this over tea later this afternoon.” He then fell to the ground, sobbing.
W.E. Linde (aka Major Crunch) writes a lot. Former military intelligence officer, amateur historian, blogger/writer at DamperThree.com. Strives to be a satirist, but probably just sarcastic. Twitter @welinde