Armenia Azerbaijan Conflict

[bojan]

1 hour ago, carrierlost said:

Actually there have been Azeri video of Russian made Repellent-1 system destroyed. Apparently doesn't do much.

Strike at about 27sec in the video.

 

It is already burned out at that moment. And since there is no video of it being hit while still whole, my guess is that it was originally hit by the arty, which both sides are using with much greater competence than some other things.

 

[bojan]

20 hours ago, glenn239 said:

Serbia's expertise should really have translated into Serbia military contractors teaching this stuff to other countries by now....

There is nothing magical about our experience, people just used manuals with a certain degree of improvisation. It required a lot of hard work by the engineer units, something that people are constantly overlooking - field unit can not use concealment efficiently w/o help of the engineer units. 

Local 1964. manual about using concealment and camouflage, and it is still pretty much valid (probably needs VK account to access). In Serbo-Croatian, but pictures can tell a story too.

https://vk.com/doc-41871942_525693710?hash=c5c8cc328b418a86eb&dl=9b271f2821b100f2d5

[Daan]

A TB2 crashed today on Armenian controlled lands, unclear whether it was downed or not:

Azeri troops operating D44 field guns:

 

Azeri drone used to direct artillery on an Armenian column, impressive footage:

 

And other 2 Armenian S-300 TELs were taken out:
https://twitter.com/azyakancokkacan

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by Daan

[glenn239]

1 hour ago, Daan said:

A TB2 crashed today on Armenian controlled lands, unclear whether it was downed or not:

Azeri troops operating D44 field guns:

 

Azeri

 

Looks like that drone has battle/shrapnel damage on the bottom of the wing.

[bojan]

There were already pics of the optics from the one yesterday, interesting if it is the same or new one?

[Daan]

The same one.

[Mistral]

11 hours ago, Daan said:

The same one.

Saw somewhere that the optic was made in June this year and the drone was manufactured in September, had 30 something hours of operation. 
 

Canada revoked the license to export the optics to Turkey a few days ago.

[glenn239]

On 10/19/2020 at 11:11 AM, Josh said:

The Russians definitely have their own anti drone tech deployed in Syria; they just haven't sold it to Armenia.

You might be right.  This story indicates that Russia downe 9 Turkish drones (with EW) that wandered too close to its airbase,

https://eurasiantimes.com/russia-shot-down-a-total-of-nine-turkish-bayraktar-drones-near-its-armenia-military-base-russian-media-reports/

[Daan]

Armenia has also claimed to have shot down lots of Azeri TB2s (and helicopters, planes etc.), but so far we have only seen evidence of a single crashed example.

[Colin]

On 10/20/2020 at 2:17 AM, bojan said:

There is nothing magical about our experience, people just used manuals with a certain degree of improvisation. It required a lot of hard work by the engineer units, something that people are constantly overlooking - field unit can not use concealment efficiently w/o help of the engineer units. 

Local 1964. manual about using concealment and camouflage, and it is still pretty much valid (probably needs VK account to access). In Serbo-Croatian, but pictures can tell a story too.

https://vk.com/doc-41871942_525693710?hash=c5c8cc328b418a86eb&dl=9b271f2821b100f2d5

Unlike Serbia, this battlefield has very little cover and even dug in, you are easy to find.

[bojan]

Yes, it is a problem, but look for Pastrik mountain at the Serbia-Albania border in the google earth. It was practically bare rock at the good part of the front lines were.

British did extensive camouflage efforts in WW2 in the North African desert, practically pioneering some of the ideas how to use concealment in the desert, and while surveyance/reconnaissance technology was much less advanced than today there are plenty of things that would still work today. Overhead cover for positions for one, make dozen positions and let them guess which one is real. As anything military, it is not about absolutes, it is about reducing enemy's odds and increasing your own.

They were limited in what they could do, but we have scarcely seen any effort.

[glenn239]

9 hours ago, Colin said:

Unlike Serbia, this battlefield has very little cover and even dug in, you are easy to find.

An S-300 TEL in open terrain should look exactly like a small temporary shelter until it deploys for launch.  If there are 4 such TEL's in a unit, they should not be closer than 5km to each other, and the number of temporary buildings should be in the hundreds, (a portable building capable of sheltering an S-300 TEL could be ordered from factory in China for probably something like $3,000 each, so to do a hundred such buildings, figure less than half a million dollars, or the price of about one S-300 long range missile).

Bojan might be right that its all in the manual, but its also about mindset - we indeed have seen scarcely any effort.  That's where Serbia might have a marketing opportunity on military advisors.  

Edited October 22, 2020 by glenn239

[Daan]

ANNA crews visits still existent and lightly camouflaged, but apparently not operational, SA-8 (at the time of filming) and its crew:

 

So yesterday Azerbaijan showed a video of an attack on a SA-6 Kub radar, today they released a video of a loitering munition diving on the radar of an Armenian SA-3 site:

 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Daan

[Colin]

I wonder if a radar controlled Bofor 57mm would thwart these attacks?

[glenn239]

I've been wondering the same thing - a radar guided 30mm or even 25mm chain gun.

[Stuart Galbraith]

What height do they operate at? 

[Daan]

Often pretty high, or far away, check from 0:34 below. The MAM-L and -C carried by the TB2 are free fall munitions without a rocket engine, but with some limited gliding ability. According to the video the standard MAM-L has a range of 8 km. You will need a missile for a hard kill and thus end up with a vehicle like the SA-19 or SA-22. The practical problem for these kind of vehicles in recent conflicts seems to be detecting and / or tracking the drone, its incoming munitions or associated suicide drones (in an EW environment). 

 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Daan

[Yama]

4 hours ago, Colin said:

I wonder if a radar controlled Bofor 57mm would thwart these attacks?

Drone is a trivial target for pretty much any anti-aircraft system. That's not the issue. If everything else stays the same, newer and more modern system would only mean more expensive repair bill when it's hit.

[Colin]

So you need an "Iron dome" type system?

[Yama]

What you need is a network of systems which can maintain high readiness as a whole. Having a singular system, no matter how modern and deadly it is, does little alone as it can't maintain its readiness 24/7, needs to be maintained, moved around, crew needs to eat, sleep etc. You need a layered network where information moves quickly laterally and systems are covering each other so even if they are offline they aren't instantly vulnerable.

[Simon Tan]

What you need is to learn from other people.

 

[Colin]

Canada's current AD is a few guys with shotguns, the current conflicts have woken the talking heads and they are getting worried as we would get slaughtered in a peer conflict by the drones/loitering munitions. question is what can we do? 

[RETAC21]

2 minutes ago, Colin said:

Canada's current AD is a few guys with shotguns, the current conflicts have woken the talking heads and they are getting worried as we would get slaughtered in a peer conflict by the drones/loitering munitions. question is what can we do? 

Anti-drone drones!

[Roman Alymov]

5 minutes ago, Colin said:

Canada's current AD is a few guys with shotguns, the current conflicts have woken the talking heads and they are getting worried as we would get slaughtered in a peer conflict by the drones/loitering munitions. question is what can we do? 

As far as i remember the only country Canada got common border with is USA. Talking heads expect US-Canada war? I do not think so,

To get into any other "peer conflict", Canadian forces need to cross ocean. So the answer to "what can we do" question is IMHO quite simple: do not go to military adventuresn on another side of the globe.

[Colin]

Historical Canada is an expeditionary army, that's not going to change and when I say "peer", I don't mean Russia, which we are most certainly not a peer force, in fact we would struggle against most nations regardless how well trained our individual soldiers are trained. Also historical Canada has gone into these oversea adventures poorly equipped and suffered do to that fact, until we reequipped. We just don't learn. The only time we were well equipped was going into the Balkans, the UN said "no heavy weapons" the Canadian general said "piss on that" and brought Mortars, TOWS and other goodies, so we could actually stare down the combatants to a certain degree. We should have brought our tanks as well.