War in Ukraine, technical and military aspects only

[Huba]

UK will reportedly deliver a lot of AA guns to Ukraine. I guess something like Bofors 40mm could be very effective against something like Shaheeds and such, so why not? 

 

[bojan]

Do they even have those still warehoused?

[bojan]

Reposted here, so it does not get lost in the garbage:

  

48 minutes ago, crazyinsane105 said:

Thought this was a pretty interesting interview! 

 

[txtree99]

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

On 11/19/2022 at 4:23 PM, bojan said:

Do they even have those still warehoused?

Nope. The grapevine is that Sunak was confused, and it's likely to be more Starstreak, possibly even Rapier if we have any left. Another possibility is 20mms guns the RN withdrew, but it's difficult to believe that they would be any use.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Stuart Galbraith

[bojan]

They have been using ex-Yugo 20mm lightweight single barreled M75 AA guns...

[Stuart Galbraith]

Probably RN Oerlikens then. But 120 seems far higher than anything the RN use. Perhaps someone found a long forgotten warehouse full of Pom Poms.

[bojan]

Or UK got it from someone else, like we hear about "Czech T-72B tanks"...

Pointless to speculate until we see it.

[glenn239]

Brief report of conflict between Russian jamming and communications early in the war,

Putin Had To Reportedly 'Scale Back' After Jammers Installed For Ukraine Disrupted Russia's Own Systems (msn.com)

[Huba]

That's a very interesting news. If they managed to secretly retrain Ukrainians to pilot and maintain western helicopter, perhaps the same is being done with fighter pilots? Surely it fuels the rumors.

 

[seahawk]

Sea Kings? One must hate the Ukrainians a lot to sent them those tired birds.

[kokovi]

ASW helicopters do not make any sense at all. I think they will rather get the Commando variant or ASW helicopters without the ASW equipment as this is clearly not their most pressing need and requires far too much tactical training to be useful in the ASW role.

[alejandro_]

50 minutes ago, kokovi said:

ASW helicopters do not make any sense at all. I think they will rather get the Commando variant or ASW helicopters without the ASW equipment as this is clearly not their most pressing need and requires far too much tactical training to be useful in the ASW role.

Maybe the equipment is removed and helicopters are used for transport/assault purposes. As you say, it makes little sense in ASW and they would be very vulnerable.

[maxwellbest]

Re AA guns...3.7 " from some long forgotten underground bunker warehouse??  If AA guns (seriously) can see 40 mm with proximity fuze being very useful....And re starstreak (stormer)....we havent heard much about since first deployed...which leads me to one of  two conclusions..its not very useful, ineffective OR its very lethal , either way OPSEC is being maintained about is real effectiveness...

[DB]

The videos we've seen purporting to be Starstreak mainly seem to have been Martlet as well.

Has anyone seen any pictures/video of Stormer in country? I don't recall any being posted here. (Not to say they aren't present, just that I haven't seen them.)

[Josh]

6 hours ago, Huba said:

That's a very interesting news. If they managed to secretly retrain Ukrainians to pilot and maintain western helicopter, perhaps the same is being done with fighter pilots? Surely it fuels the rumors.

 

Why does Ukraine need ASW?

[Stuart Galbraith]

4 hours ago, kokovi said:

ASW helicopters do not make any sense at all. I think they will rather get the Commando variant or ASW helicopters without the ASW equipment as this is clearly not their most pressing need and requires far too much tactical training to be useful in the ASW role.

I was idly wondering if they might be equipped with Searchwater radar, which would make a quite useful AEW asset, if utilized correctly.

if they arent commandos, they might be Sea King HAS.6(CR), which were supposedly converted into utility helicopters. Presumably they had defence suppression equipment fitted for Afghanistan. They might still be useful, although good luck with getting spares.

[Huba]

Article is paywalled, but I understand that these are to be used for SAR and such, not necessarily  for ASW. But we can't really know, some ASW capability against hypothetical RU drones might come in handy too.

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 hours ago, maxwellbest said:

Re AA guns...3.7 " from some long forgotten underground bunker warehouse??  If AA guns (seriously) can see 40 mm with proximity fuze being very useful....And re starstreak (stormer)....we havent heard much about since first deployed...which leads me to one of  two conclusions..its not very useful, ineffective OR its very lethal , either way OPSEC is being maintained about is real effectiveness...

Yes, I can imagine some civil servant having a poke around Copinacre just before shutdown and being surprised to find 120 3.7 inchers still in their grease.

We havent seen much in the way of shots of Starstreak either. I suspect its probably just getting on iwth its job. Its not like either are really photogenic, unlike a HIMARS for example.

[alejandro_]

I have come across this graph in twitter and the other thread, I will put it here with some of my comments



For Iskander, Russian Army has 14 brigades equipped with this missile. Until the end of 2019 each brigade had 3 divisions with 12 double launchers. At that point it was decided to reinforce the structure with a fourth division, so the initial salvo could be up to 32 missiles instead of 24. This means that initial salvo could be up to 480 missiles. Each brigade should carry several salvos. More missiles should be available at different levels with varying readiness. 900 missiles is way too low.

As others have pointed out, in the late 90s Ukraine transferred 575 Kh-55 missiles.

[bojan]

Agree:

With 3 Bns per Bde:

14 * 3 * 12 * 2 = 1008

3 combat loads (minimum for unit to be considered "initially operational")= 3024 (or 1512 if second missile on launcer is not included in "ready load")

5 combat loads (amount each operational unit should have) = 5040 (2510 if second missile on launcer is not included in "ready load")

And we are not even looking at strategic reserves that go anywhere from additional 5 to 20 combat loads.

900 is vast underestimation (at least by 40%), even if not all units were fully operational.

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by bojan

[Huba]

22 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, I can imagine some civil servant having a poke around Copinacre just before shutdown and being surprised to find 120 3.7 inchers still in their grease.

We havent seen much in the way of shots of Starstreak either. I suspect its probably just getting on iwth its job. Its not like either are really photogenic, unlike a HIMARS for example.

IMO, given that in the latest arms package, US is sending .50 cals meant as AA weapons, these UK guns will turn out to be Oerlikons.

29 minutes ago, bojan said:

Agree:

With 3 Bns per Bde:

14 * 3 * 12 * 2 = 1008

3 combat loads (minimum for unit to be considered "initially operational")= 3024 (or 1512 if second missile on launcer is not included in "ready load")

5 combat loads (amount each operational unit should have) = 5040 (2510 if second missile on launcer is not included in "ready load")

And we are not even looking at strategic reserves that go anywhere from additional 5 to 20 combat loads.

900 is vast underestimation (at least by 40%), even if not all units were fully operational.

One thing to keep in mind is that a (considerable?) number of Iskander missiles is armed with nuclear warheads, adding to the total stockpile perhaps, but really not being relevant in the current stage of the conflict.
To have 3000 ready, the production rate would have to be 150 a year in during last two decades, give or take. Assuming they are not crippled by sanctions here and able to ramp up the production after February, they would've produced say 200 missiles this year alone. Question is - where are these missiles? There weren't any reports of Iskander launches in recent months, including very critical moments like Izyum counteroffensive.
Also, what does "Iskander" really mean here? Only SRBMs? Or does it include the R500 cruise missiles as well? This graphic is bogus without more details.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Huba

[glenn239]

Combat deployment of S-70 to Ukraine seems likely for 2023,

https://eurasiantimes.com/hunters-on-prowl-russias-futuristic-stealth-drones-developed/

Quantities will no doubt be severely limited.

 

[bojan]

32 minutes ago, Huba said:

...One thing to keep in mind is that a (considerable?) number of Iskander missiles is armed with nuclear warheads...

What is the need for "considerable" number of nuke armed ones? IIRC Soviet normative was 3 nuke armed missiles per Bn of Tochkas, that is 3/36 or 3/60 missiles per 12-launch vehicle Bn being nukes. If we assume same ratio for Iskander (since it serves same role), it ~5-8% of all missiles being nukes.

 

[glenn239]

2 hours ago, alejandro_ said:

I have come across this graph in twitter and the other thread, I will put it here with some of my comments



For Iskander, Russian Army has 14 brigades equipped with this missile. Until the end of 2019 each brigade had 3 divisions with 12 double launchers. At that point it was decided to reinforce the structure with a fourth division, so the initial salvo could be up to 32 missiles instead of 24. This means that initial salvo could be up to 480 missiles. Each brigade should carry several salvos. More missiles should be available at different levels with varying readiness. 900 missiles is way too low.

As others have pointed out, in the late 90s Ukraine transferred 575 Kh-55 missiles.

 

Ukraine lies about everything for the purpose of the war effort.  Here, the objective is to exaggerate the depletion of Russian precision missile inventories, as a talking point to the usefulness of the war to the West.  Huba mentions depletion of Iskander stocks, but my question is, is there any independent evidence that the Russians have fired 829 of them so far? 

The Russian cruise missile assault currently underway is consistently firing more missiles more frequently than what should seem the case from the numbers above.

The S-300 missile stock totals of 8,000 look too low for the size of the S-300 programme in the Soviet Union.  I wouldn't be surprised if total stocks were in excess of 20,000.