S-300s, Buk’s, OSA’s, Tor’s. They were even updating old S-125s. Bunch of MANPADS.
The problem is they are older, and the Russians know them all inside and out. And our strikes into Syria under Trump showed that the S300 systems can be totally spoofed.
Ukraine has mostly relied on refurbishing it’s Soviet era assets. If there’s one thing about Soviet aircraft, they’re very easy to keep flying.
They’ve never been close to enough to the west to purchase American or European aircraft (plus our stuff is stupidly expensive anyway) and even if they had, it’s really hard to integrate Western aircraft into a post Soviet military industrial complex.
Poland has been restructuring around Western equipment since the end of the Cold War but it’s changeover still isn’t finished and they’ve needed a ton of assistance to build up their industry to service their F-16s that they fly alongside their MiG-29s.
India is probably the only country in the world that has managed to successfully integrate both NATO and Russian aircraft together with a MIC that has proven capable of supporting both types of air assets.
Oh absolutely. Ukraine has been very open on the obsolescence of their air defense. But they’ll take a bunch of Russian planes down. Just not enough.
We know from video footage the Russians have been painting “Z”s on their ground assets to distinguish them from Ukraine’s.
Don’t know about the planes…I’m assuming electronic differentiation?
Which can be jammed/spoofed
Depends on the target. Aircraft flying West from Russia proper could make high speed egress in Belarus airspace then circle back to Russian bases in clean air space.
Yea, my bet is Ukrainian sitting alert and was heading to play.
Makes sense. They both use T-72s and T-80s still. Although Russia once again has a huge advantage in armor due to both numbers and modernizations. The T-90 series has huge advantages over both the T-72 and T-80 families. It’s faster, better armored, actually has fire control roughly equivalent to Western tanks, and the Russians have them all outfitted with Kontakt-V reactive amour panels. They can take hits from APFSDS rounds that would pass straight through T-72s or T-80s.
Basically if we see any tank battles, and that’s already very unlikely thanks to Russian air to ground assets, the Russian T-90s are going to mop the floor with Ukraine’s T-72s, T-80UD, and T-84 tanks.
One would expect a reasonably rapid Russian victory in the conventional phase…it will have to be the insurgency that bleeds them and bogs them down.
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Expect the next 36-48 hours to be all about SEAD and establishing air superiority over Ukraine. There will also be lots of long range SSM strikes on key infrastructure. On the ground probing attacks to identify potential breakthrough points for penetration and rapid advance by Operational Maneuver Groups Should be at least 3 OMGs on the East side and one in Belarus waiting for weak points in the Ukrainian’ lines to be identified.
I don’t buy this…but reports are flying round. But claims right now of an airborne assault on Kyiv’s airport and an amphibious assault on Mariupol. Mariupol I might believe, but the Kyiv airport one seems outlandish. So, be wary of things “reported”.
NBC is reporting that there are explosions in Kyiv.
Yepp. That’s pretty much what Ukraine is going to have to do if it wants to survive.
Makes me wonder if Putin has taken that into the equation. I could see him taking Donbas and stopping there. That’s what I would do if I was him. If he pushes all the way to Kiev and takes the entire country, he’s going to have deal with an Ukrainian insurgency that’s never going to stop unless the Russians kill every single military age man and woman in the western half of the country.
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Makes sense now, betting that jet wasn’t Ukrainian but was low-level recon of the airport.
I was thinking along these lines
If the Russians dropped airborne troops into either of the major airports around Kyiv, I hope they knew they were never coming back.
Well now we have to sink a few yachts, at least. Don’t tell me what to do, vlad.
Anyone who wears a uniform and goes into combat knows this. Pretty sure we have a few posters who have been downrange who could confirm or deny this, oh and not referencing any mods.
So I guess pride wins the day and it was better to keep the door open for Ukraine possibly joining NATO than to cut a deal with Russia keeping them neutral and Ukraine not being taken over by Russia. Now it’s just as likely in a week or so instead of Ukraine sitting a sovereign nation as a buffer to Russia it will no longer exist and Russia will have new borders bordering Hungary, Romania, and Poland. Ya that’s much better than keeping Ukraine out of NATO.
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