"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again."

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The bad part of our good system. Trial by jury (ideally not by Press). Everyone gets his day in court and is entitled to representation. I wonder sometimes about the motives of that representation. Professional challenge? More mercenary interests? Philosophical reasons? Whatever. I would not want a system of trial by vanishing.
 
My father in law (a very senior magistrate) always said Lawyer is the olde Englishe spelling of Liar.

Far too many liars lawyers convince their clients (victims) to plead not guilty to "open and shut" cases because that way they get thousands of dollars income for a case that takes months of preparation and court time whereas if the client pleads guilty to the actual charge or a lesser charge (eg manslaughter instead of murder in many domestic violence cases) then there would be no months of preparation and the court time would only be a "few hours".

Many recent "open and shut" cases recently have graphic CCTV footage so the outcome is a foregone conclusion but the liars still waste several weeks of court time and taxpayers money for their own personal gain.

This particular liar lawyer has a large legal bill to pay for his own misdeeds so wants money more than most.
 
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Now is not the time to deploy these jammers. Now is the time to test and perfect them, in quieter sectors and small numbers.

Once confirmed they work, deploy them with the offensive itself. They mustn't give the Russians time to adapt to these jammers by early deployments.
 
Admiral Beez said:
This and the vid below had me thinking of Operation Vengeance.


View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-FNrYud1T74
Putin's escort of Flankers gets overwhelmed by Ukrainian fighters or drones or both.
Click to expand...
Interesting SU-35 loadout of two AA-11 Archers (high off bore sight heat seekers) and two AA-12 Adders (AIM120 class weapon AKA Amramski). And the Adders appear to be the early versions. The plane can carry 12 missiles total. It's the definitive version of the Flanker series and the single Russian fighter I would like to fly the most. The formation takeoffs looked terrible.
 
How does the SU-35 measure against the 2nd hand F-16s Ukraine will receive in 2024-2025? The Russian is much larger, so if it comes to guns up close the Viper should have some agility advantages?

 
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Admiral Beez said:
How does the SU-35 measure against the 2nd hand F-16s Ukraine will receive in 2024-2025? The Russian is much larger, so if it comes to guns up close the Viper should have some agility advantages?

View attachment 751699
Click to expand...
Admiral,

Good questions. First, the F-16s I think Ukraine is / are getting are the F-16A/B MLU Vipers. I got out of the business after the first round of upgrades so know it can carry AIM120s, and probably AIM-9x (high off bore sight version- have flown with them). I would guess there were radar upgrades, IFF interrogator, and depending on the country as well as Link 16. Probably a decent fighter avionics wise, but the limitation is the engines are PW F100-220s and the airframes are old. It's a good engine, flew with them in the Eagle, but down big time on thrust as compared to the GE F110 (F16C/D Blocks 30, 40 and 50). Or the F100-129 (later version with more thrust).

The Flanker in the basic version is fly by wire (FBW) and has good to great high AOA capabilities. It also carries ALOT of gas and lots of weapons. The later versions added canards, then dropped those in favor of thrust vectoring (3 axis I think). Each step along that path was enhanced maneuverability. The big picture is you do not want to get into a visual fight with anyone if you can help it, especially if they can out maneuver you.

The unknown variables in this question is to what skill levels are the players ( I think the Russians probably are on the low end of the skill spectrum, get little flight training time, aren't known for out of the box thinking). On the other hand the Ukrainians have been training against Western guys for quite some time so they have had exposure. I fought the German MiG29s at Laage AB in the early 2000s. There were about five of the original Eastern trained guys in the squadron and I fought them all. One of them had potential and was decent. He thought in the fight like we do, or tried to do he chess match level thinking. The others were canon fodder. We would do what's called "no respect" maneuvers against them and get away with it as they just didn't understand. And they were getting in the neighborhood of 250-350 sorties a year. Way more than Western guys get but their average sortie duration (ASD) was in the vicinity of 15-20 minute, flown over their base (which means most of their time airborne was spent fighting - unlike anything I had experienced).

So Russian training, overlapped with severe Western indoctrination and an abundance of training sorties and still they didn't get it. There is a serious difference in how the Communists pick / recruit/ train than how we do. And we are seeing the results of that over UKR now.

I have been airborne over the Nellis Range Complex with more fighters at one time than I've seen in action at any time since this began. From what I understand the Russians only go in with overwhelming numbers superiority and rather don't push the fight, nor act in a coordinated manner between strikers, and air superiority. Color me not impressed.

When airborne over Southern Iraq I would have a plan to protect my package (air to ground players), the ability to roll them to some air to air. I would also be able to stay and take care of the next package if their escort fell out, and if there was USN operating in the Box (Southern No Fly), I could cover them by time deconfliction, or hang someone on the tanker(s) and play leapfrog. I had a ream of papers in my G suit pocket and should fallout occur play a good game of pick up sticks. I have seen nothing from either side that suggests anything approaching that level of complexity is occurring.

Big picture in a 1 v 1 I would rather fly the Flanker vice the Early Viper. However, being airborne over there is risky as the Russians are using the "If it flies it dies" rules for unleashing their SAMs, which isn't safe for anyone. A lot depends on the skill level of the pilots almost more so than the capability of the airframes.

Cheers,
Biff

In your picture note the droopy nozzles on the Flanker (thrust vectoring signature). Also note the shiney nozzle on the Viper which should mean the GE engine (big thrust motor) but am not one hundred percent sure as the photo is a little grainy.
 
What's insane is that it mostly appears to be foot infantry leading the attack. Tank and IFV claims by Ukraine haven't ticked up noticeably in the past few days.

The specific sector near Avdiivka where the attacks took place over the 11th/12th has previously seen heavy use of Russian armour - and plenty of losses. But only sparing use in the last few days, and then primarily as indirect fire weapons.

This looks like a switch in tactics. Infantry losses are on the rise, but there's been a decrease in armour and artillery losses. Maybe Russian commanders are finally becoming more risk averse about their heavy equipment?
 
Jabberwocky said:
What's insane is that it mostly appears to be foot infantry leading the attack. Maybe Russian commanders are finally becoming more risk averse about their heavy equipment?
Click to expand...
FWIW, after twenty months of fighting and hundreds of thousands of casualties, the Russians are still able to push forward and take new ground while putting a stop to Ukraine's much anticipated 2023 spring offensive. Losses in men are inconsequential to Russia's totalitarian regime, especially when the losses are mainly from prison labour and Siberian Untermensch, and when the high side of Russia's estimated 500k dead/wounded/pow is equal to a slow month's USSR military casualties during WW2.

In the 46 months between Operational Barbarossa in June 1941 to VE Day in May 1945, the USSR's military losses were 8.6 million dead and over 22 million wounded, for a total of 31 million military casualties. That's an average of 673,810 causalities every month. With this perspective, Russia's manpower losses over twenty months in Ukraine are but a nuisance to Putin, and at a sustainable rate that allows Russia to outlast the increasingly reluctant West.

I'm expecting epic levels of election interference from the Russians in advance of the Nov 2024 POTUS and Congressional races.
 
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Was just watching a video of Ukrainian tanks clearing Russian troops out of buildings with direct fire unchallenged and at point blank range. At one point, a group of what appeared to be a dozen Russians, ran into one building for cover and one of the tanks proceeded to put two rounds into it, which obliterated the structure.

Regardless of western elections or aid package squabbles, the fact remains that Russian casualties simply cannot continue indefinitely.
It's true that Russia has a much larger pool of manpower to draw from, but this war of Putin's is not a matter of national survival, no matter how much their talking heads try and sell it to the public as a campaign to stop Nazis or NATO or whatever the catch-word of the day may be and the growing anti-war movement among Russia's people appears the be gaining traction.
 
The actual mobilisation levels between the two conflicts also shows a stark difference as does the number in service
at the start of each conflict - 1941 - over 5 million, 2022 - between 1.1 and 1.2 million.

Availability of equipment and production of weapon systems / ammunition is also chalk and cheese.

This makes things much closer all round.
 

It's important to remember that with the Internet, information about the war is much harder to suppress. There's also a big difference in the state terror apparatus available to Stalin compared to Putin. These facts combine to imply that Putin must pay sensitive attention to public opinion, even as he seeks to manipulate it.

Another factor mitigating against mass levees of the type you're positing from WWII is that Russia's economy is slumping and they can't afford to take too many employees off production lines. Remember, by 1944 USSR was receiving great amounts of Lend-Lease, not just resources and raw materials but finished goods which would have otherwise had to have been produced in Russian factories. I can't specify how many workers this freed up for military service, but it had to be significant. Such circumstances not obtaining today, that's even less available.

For these reasons, I don't see the great levees of 1943-44 happening today. Look at the exodus the last one instigated, after all.
 
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I recall reading that 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 were dead by the end of the war (a truly harrowing figure...). No way to hide that sort of statistic these days. Not to mention that the Soviret Union was drafting from all the republics, not just the Russian Republic
 
More on this:

Lawyer says Russian billionaire banned from Australia is a 'personal friend' of Vladimir Putin

A lawyer defends the decision by former foreign affairs minister Marise Payne to impose sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
www.abc.net.au
 
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