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The time has come to supply Ukraine with COIN/LAAR aircraft, what the heck is the West waiting for?


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Posted
2 minutes ago, EchoFiveMike said:

Ukraine should be a buffer state between Russia and Western Europe if you people are so worried about it.  S/F....Ken M 

Too late for that, it's either Western alignment or part of Russia - de iure or not (like Belarus). To some extent it's a natural geopolitical process - unaligned 'borderlands', especially those strategically located, can't stay unaligned forever. If they're lucky, they get to choose their alignment, if not someone else makes a choice.

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Posted
11 hours ago, R011 said:

What part of the Ukraine war not being an insurgency with the consequent lack of AD assets are you confused about?

What AD assets do the Russians have in the Crimea Peninsula? There is no SAM or AD umbrella over the Crimea. I am sure the Ukrainians have already figured out the gaps in coverage there. And why do you assume a COIN/LAAR is automatically dead in the face of AD? They have flares, chaff, radar warning receivers, etc. Are they going to have zero losses? Of course not. But modern fast jets will also have losses in the face of AD.

Posted
14 hours ago, Angrybk said:

One factor to consider is that Ukie pilots are probably just trying to make themselves useful given that this is an existential war for Ukraine, so would probably accept anything that flies. 

That is exactly right. I am sure there are many Ukrainian transport and helo pilots with no rides. Right now the US and West for whatever reason are not sending fast jets from their inventory. SO, rather then have nothing, I don't see why the US and the West can't buy A-29 Super Tucanos from Brazil, (a neutral country as much as you can define that these days) and give them to the Ukrainians. A Ukrainian helo or transport pilot should be proficient in the A-29 within 3-6 months. The same with the training of the ground crew. On the other hand, to convert a Ukrainian fighter pilot and ground crew to a say Panavia Tornado, F-16, or Mirage 2000 will take 1 year at the minimum. And the Ukrainians need anything in the air right now.

Posted
5 hours ago, On the way said:

...There is no SAM or AD umbrella over the Crimea....

Lol.

Posted
12 hours ago, EchoFiveMike said:

Seems like a bunch of desperate clownery at American taxpayer expense.  "Do something!"  even if it's stupid and wasteful and pointless.  

Ukraine should be a buffer state between Russia and Western Europe if you people are so worried about it.  S/F....Ken M 

Buffer states doesn't really work.

Posted
1 hour ago, bojan said:

Lol.

this makes glennspace seem rational.

Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, On the way said:

What AD assets do the Russians have in the Crimea Peninsula? There is no SAM or AD umbrella over the Crimea. I am sure the Ukrainians have already figured out the gaps in coverage there. And why do you assume a COIN/LAAR is automatically dead in the face of AD? They have flares, chaff, radar warning receivers, etc. Are they going to have zero losses? Of course not. But modern fast jets will also have losses in the face of AD.

I think you're viewing SAM systems like they were in 1965 over Hanoi - they fire a hundred missiles and nothing hits.  You need to start thinking of them something more as like an automatic one-shot one-kill weapon.  Let's say Ukraine flew 50 COIN aircraft towards an S-400 battery in Crimea to swamp it.  The probable outcome?  All 50 aircraft shot down within minutes.  SAMs these days are that lethal.

Edited by glenn239
Posted
Just now, glenn239 said:

Worked fine for Finland from 1944 to 2023.

They were a NATO member in everything but name since at least 2000s, EU member since the 1990s. In 1990s Russia wasn't in the best shape and before that they were kinda busy with the Cold War and stuff. Btw. guess against whom the Finns were preparing to defend against even during the Cold War.

Not to mention that both strategic significance and Russian perception of Finland can't be compared to Ukraine.

Posted
7 hours ago, On the way said:

What AD assets do the Russians have in the Crimea Peninsula? There is no SAM or AD umbrella over the Crimea. I am sure the Ukrainians have already figured out the gaps in coverage there. And why do you assume a COIN/LAAR is automatically dead in the face of AD? They have flares, chaff, radar warning receivers, etc. Are they going to have zero losses? Of course not. But modern fast jets will also have losses in the face of AD.

Seriously? :D

Posted
7 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Worked fine for Finland from 1944 to 2023.

Considering that Finland had secret intelligence and military co-operation with NATO/USA since 50's plus secret agreements with Sweden (for example Sweden had extra Draken fighter planes earmarked for Finland)... Neutrality was mostly in speeches. 

Militarily also, Soviets/Russia were always seen as only possible threat (apart from nuclear war, USA had plans to nuke possible Soviet advance routes in Finland). We never saw Sweden, Norway USA or NATO as any threat as invading entity. Plans were always made vs. Soviets. 

Soviet Union did need Western-quality stuff and Finland had very beneficial trade agreements with SU. Also, politically it was often beneficial to be seen as "Friend of SU". Militarily that was never a case.

Politically Finland stopped to be even nominally neutral (Sweden also claimed neutrality that time, but was so strongly aligned to West that none really believed in that...) 1995 when we did join EU. So, military neutrality practically ended same time, with increasing efforts to make FDF "NATO compatible". 

If Russia had behaved differently, things might be different. But as our president said:

 

Actions have reactions.

Posted

In Ukraine how close to the ground do aircraft have to fly to avoid detection from radar?

Posted
26 minutes ago, JWB said:

In Ukraine how close to the ground do aircraft have to fly to avoid detection from radar?

Lawnmower low:

 

Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Sardaukar said:

Considering that Finland had secret intelligence and military co-operation with NATO/USA since 50's plus secret agreements with Sweden (for example Sweden had extra Draken fighter planes earmarked for Finland)... Neutrality was mostly in speeches. 

Right, but for about 80 years Finland was non-aligned and it worked fine.  As we discussed for a decade before the war.  Now, it appears that its more likely than not Ukraine is going to lose the war and suffer north of 250,000 KIA doing so, and be swallowed into the Sino-Russian orbit.

As you say, actions have reactions.

Edited by glenn239
Posted
6 hours ago, Pavel Novak said:

Buffer states doesn't really work.

Ukraine was such a buffer until 2014.  A buffer state wouldn't be a bad thing.  Of course the Russians want Poland or Germany to be that buffer while Ukraine is returned to the loving arms of Mother Russia.

Posted
1 hour ago, bojan said:

Lawnmower low:

 

What... are they firing off there?  Are those unguided rockets and are they doing that same thing you seem Russian helos do where they're basically treating them like artillery?

Posted

If Russia had stayed out, Ukraine would probably have been quite happy as a ‘buffer state’, but nooo…Russia (well, Putin at the very least) had to start having delusions of restored empire.

Posted
1 hour ago, glenn239 said:

Right, but for about 80 years Finland was non-aligned and it worked fine.  As we discussed for a decade before the war.  Now, it appears that its more likely than not Ukraine is going to lose the war and suffer north of 250,000 KIA doing so, and be swallowed into the Sino-Russian orbit.

As you say, actions have reactions.

Ukraine was non-aligned too, still is. The main difference is not in what Ukraine and Finland did, but in Russia's perception of them.

Posted
1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

... are they doing that same thing you seem Russian helos do where they're basically treating them like artillery?

Yes. That is what both Russians and Ukrainians do with Su-25s. Attempts to use PGMs or dumb bombs end in almost guaranteed shutdown of at least one plane from a group.

For helos, both sides are also using same profile attacks with rocket pods, through there are also also quite a few vids of Russian ones using ATGMs at extended (5-8+km) ranges. Russian helos at least have FCS that makes such attacks semi-viable in some cases, but Ukrainian helos and both sides Su-25s are basically just wasting rockets.

Posted
7 hours ago, DB said:

this makes glennspace seem rational.

Well, when every media and twatterati is telling almost every day that "Russia is running out of X", "Russian weapons does not work". "Ukrainians are doing great" "Lopsided kill ratio heavily favoring Ukrainians", "Russian human wave attacks"  etc... why blame people who start believing it? :)

Posted

Once upon a time, there was a book by a chap called Vernor Vinge.

It was (and still is, I suppose) called "Rainbow's End". One of the threads through the book was that school kids were being taught how to look up sources of information online. A significant lesson was how to smell bullshit when it was presented to you. (There was also an appalling idea that AI image recognition could be used to rapidly digitise a library of real paper books after they were shredded by blowing them about in a giant chamber by reassembling the jigsaw puzzle, but I digress.)

Or maybe I don't. A lot of what passes for analysis reminds me of that process gone wrong, with little snippets of information (real, or not) being assembled by a pattern-matching "intelligence" to form a whole that is as convincing as ChatGPT, whilst also being utterly wrong.

Posted
44 minutes ago, bojan said:

Yes. That is what both Russians and Ukrainians do with Su-25s. Attempts to use PGMs or dumb bombs end in almost guaranteed shutdown of at least one plane from a group.

For helos, both sides are also using same profile attacks with rocket pods, through there are also also quite a few vids of Russian ones using ATGMs at extended (5-8+km) ranges. Russian helos at least have FCS that makes such attacks semi-viable in some cases, but Ukrainian helos and both sides Su-25s are basically just wasting rockets.

I was going to say... referencing the bolded bit isn't this just a complete waste of resources?  If this is all the UkAF is doing... is it even worth the fuel and the possibility of losing the pilot and plane over such attacks?  :huh:

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