Ukraine v Russia II

Is it happening!?!?

Two 🇺🇦 pilots finished 3 weeks of training on F-16 simulator in 🇺🇸. An American assessment of 🇺🇦 fighter pilots has revealed they would be ready to fly F-16 after fewer than 6 months of training - Chief of aviation of 🇺🇦 Air Force has told to The Times.https://t.co/YEBQllTElP pic.twitter.com/03hHxtDSwf

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) March 20, 2023

 

Dzhankoy is a city in north central Crimea, the crossroad of transportation in the peninsula. What we know from video is that last night there were several bangs probably caused by suicide drones because we can hear high-pitched small propeller whine and lots of small arms fire presumably from Russian soldiers trying to shoot it/them down.

What the Ukrainian government is claiming is that a trainload of Kaliber cruise missiles was attacked and destroyed.

 

Agreed.

Yet what good does it do to wax poetically about those bygone days?

 

… and talking of drones.
How about these from Australia?


Paper Planes? Ukraine Gets Flat-Packed Cardboard Drones From Australia

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...-flat-packed-cardboard-drones-from-australia/

 

I see Taylor Twellman has an interesting side hustle.

 

His head isn't big enough.

 

Similar to Bakhmut, Russia is suffering huge casualties as they crawl inch by inch in an attempt to cut off Avdiivka. For those that aren't familiar with Avdiivka, it is a HEAVILY fortified town just outside of the city of Donetsk that Ukraine and Russia have been fighting for since 2014. Until very, very recently, Russia has not been able to make any advances, but, as with Bakhmut, they have hit upon a human wave approach to make marginal advances around Avdiivka. Also, much like Bakhmut, the Ukrainians seem unable to prevent them from making small advances every day, but they are piling up dead Russians like cord wood.

WARNING: Below is a video showing a trench full of dozens of dead and dying Russians near Avdiivka, so if you don't want to see that, don't show spolier

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

1638158855640174594 is not a valid tweet id

 

From one analyst, the new Russian tactic is to make heavy use of RPG with thermobaric warheads. A good bunker system can withstand a lot of high explosives without a lot of casualties (which is certainly the case of Avdiivka - that place is flattened), but a close hit from a thermobaric warheads is going to affect you even if you behind a lot of protection.

The problem is that you have to get close to use them, and if the Russians are spotted advancing they can be hit with indirect fire before that happens.

 

Doesn't Russia have a bunch of thermobaric missiles? Couldn't they just use those instead of sending a bunch of men to their deaths?

 

They have the TOS-1 rocket launcher, but they don't have many so they are a fairly rare sight on the battlefield. Oryx only shows 6 damaged, destroyed, or captured, and only one of those was recent.

 

Pootin using a doppleganger?
https://www.newsweek.com › russia-ukraine-putin-fake-chin-double-conspiracy-1788946
Pictures of Vladimir Putin's Chin Spark Conspiracy Theories
1 dag geledenRussian President Vladimir Putin is pictured in Moscow on March 20, 2023. His appearance in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, occupied by Moscow, has sparked speculation over whether a body...

 

Oil shipping is going a bit screwy because of the Russia sanctions. Russia are scraping together a ghost fleet (with lots of Greek shipping magnate help) to send black market oil around the world. Well over half the recent sales of middle-sized carriers has been to "undisclosed parties". Then there is the legal trade, which is now going by ship to Asia instead of pipeline to Europe, and these also use middle-sized ships. This means there is a shortfall of these ships available in the world. It costs about $2.80 per barrel of oil for a supertanker (VLCC size) to go from the US to Europe. But very few ports in Europe can fit that size ship. It costs $8.50 each barrel sent the same path using a middle-sized AFRAMAX ship.

One big problem is that Europe's governments aren't equipped to deal with smuggling. There are no government systems for tracking this - they depend on private companies why have limited information gathering abilities. And even when they find ships smuggling, they have no framework to do anything about it. For instance, all Spain did when they recently caught ships transferring oil off their coast was send a sternly worded letter. (This is also how Russia continues to steal grain in occupied parts of Ukraine, shipping it to Syria and North Africa right under Europe's noses.)

But before you think Russia is winning a lot in this, one of the reasons they need a lot of ghost ships is that the people willing to do under-the-table deals aren't really that trustworthy and it might take a long time to hammer out deals. There's been a ship full of crude oil sitting off shore of Ghana for three weeks while they try to scrape together enough gold(!) to pay for it.

 

I can tell you, that Denmark have found an object near Bornholm on top of the Russian gas pipeline, that may be a bomb device that for some reason did not explode, and for now this is being guarded and investigated by Danish Royal Navy ships, the frigate HDMS Niels Juel (F363), the Diana-class patrol vessel Rota (P525) and the Flyvefisken-class patrol diving vessel Søløven (Sea lion) (P563/Y311)

 

I thought they had a non dollar system in the South-whatever to handle it?
Was that fake news

 

I always rep people that include class names and pennant numbers with ship names.

 

There's been a change to the Abrams that the US will be giving to Ukraine. Previously, the US was buying new M1A2s from the manufacturer and then sending them to Ukraine. That has change now and the US will be sending them refurbished M1A1s. These are, of course, older variants of the Abrams and the US will be stripping them of any advanced technology they may have on them, but they are still better than what Ukraine is facing. It also doesn't seem to have an impact on the delivery schedule as the M1A1s aren't expected to show up in Ukraine until 2024.

Also, the US finished a test with Ukrainian pilots and discovered that they could be trained to fly F16s competently in less than 6 months. There hasn't been any change to the US's opinion on providing Ukraine F16s, but they now know it is possible to quickly train the pilots.

 

Well, there is a lot of fake news, US-centric fairy tales (Hersh) and nonsense going on regarding the pipeline explosions, so being from Denmark myself, I have to be as factually precise as possible.

 

Well, he omitted pictures of the Danish navy, so I took it up to fill the gap:

I only don't get why it's a mirror image.

 

If you are trying to turn me on, you posted the wrong photo.



Oh, baby.

 

You still need hard money to make that work, and Ghana doesn't have any.

 

Well, Denmark has always been a seafaring nation, and having to constantly patrol the Baltic Sea and also the waters around the North Pole and Greenland ( to defend it against the likes of China, Russia and Trump), then Denmark obviously have a rather large Royal Navy that very much cooperate with the UK Royal Navy that is officially "copying" the Danish made frigates.