Russian invasion of Ukraine

The thing that worries me is that the main reason ruzzians have been sending these rockets is to scope and maybe show they can deliver a nuke if they want to. The ugly truth is they don't give a rat's ass about where they hit as long as some pass through air-defense.

I actually think you're giving them too much credit there.

The rockets the other day were clearly retaliatory. There was some expert on Radio 4 saying that Putin would likely have authorised them himself, which is why the targets didn't make much sense, because he has no idea what he's doing militarily speaking. I mean they could have used them to hit Ukrainian military targets, which would have made much more sense.

He's since said that 'there's no need for more massive strikes on Ukraine for now' - i.e. they've retaliated and Ukraine should think twice before embarrassing him again.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that missiles are expensive and Russia has already fired quite a lot of them.

Unfortunately we know they can deliver a nuke.

Good NY Times summary of the missile situation:

Is Russia running out of its precision-guided missiles?

“This is the $64,000 question,” according to Max Bergmann, a former American diplomat and expert on European and Russian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. There have been several signs that Russia is running low on precision-guided weapons, he said, and “it’s not clear that they have huge reserves.” Among the clues: Russia has hit targets on the ground in Ukraine with missiles and rockets that were designed to destroy aircraft or ships. It has also bought a supply of “kamikaze” drones from Iran.

There has not been any definitive evidence presented publicly that Russia is running out of its best aerial weapons. But if it were, it would at least make it harder for Russian troops to hit cities like the capital, Kyiv, far from the front lines.

American and Western officials have refused to release specific estimates of how many precision-guided missiles Russia was believed to have at the start of the war. But even before this week’s airstrikes, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official, Vadym Skibitsky, said that Russia had depleted about 65 percent of its missile stockpile, and likely had only about 20 percent left of its supply of Iskander ballistic missiles that have been one of Moscow’s weapons of choice.

Mr. Bergmann said Russia will almost certainly manufacture more missiles to replenish its supply, but American sanctions have limited imports of microchips and other parts needed in production. Moscow may also turn to its allies for arms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/world/europe/russia-missiles-ukraine.html

This is a picture from yesterday, October 16th, when a de-mining team,
supported by our Lithuanian organization Blue/Yellow, stumbled over
this mine, in the vicinity of a here unnamed township in Eastern
Ukraine.

The mine, PFM-1, known as the "butterfly", is being inserted by air
(via artillery or by air). It was used widely during the Soviet
Afghanistan conflict (about a million pcs) and caused several tens of
thousands of deaths and disabilities during that war. Especially
children, who tend to pick it up since it looks like a toy, suffered
from it.

Now, Russia is using the same mines in Ukraine, deliberately spreading
them in an around populated areas. More evidence (videos, photos,
neutralized mines) is available.

This tells you something about the way Russia perceives Ukraine, and
what measures it is willing to deploy in order to force the country
and its people to "surrender".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1_mine

1 Attachment

Ottawa treaty against land mines is the stupidest thing ever. Ruzzia of course has not ratified it, but this is the sort of thing that replaces well-thought out and documented mine fields. For some reason it is better to just shoot mines all over the places where there is no chance of actually ever clearing them.

Terrorists!

In the interest of balance, Ukraine still has over 5 million of these exact mines stockpiled. A few scattered in a photo doesn't mean a lot. That photo looks staged as they should glide and disperse rather than clump together. My understanding is that once they've been deployed they can't be picked up/used/deactivated - they can only explode. So these have likely not been armed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/08/04/who-dropped-thousands-of-antipersonnel-butterfly-mines-on-donetsk/?sh=6c5aea786992 (summary: one side claims one thing, another side claims another thing).

Esprit de corps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9N9Nx39a24

That photo looks staged as they should glide and disperse rather than clump together.

Recently collected and put together for photo surely?

But I've read (and am not proclaiming to be an expert) that once they've been 'fired' there's no turning them off. They just explode. You can pre-empt or trigger the explosion, but you can't make them safe - so there's no picking them up for a photo op.

Link: https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2017-03/enpi_2007_c2007_4230_rap_east_landminesclearance.pdf

Their specific design does not allow them to be either
safely neutralized or disarmed.

That photo above may just be a reference so people know what they look like, but if the above link is true I would hope it's not being used as a 'here look what ruzzians did' (because they're doing awful shit already and don't need it to be embellished. Without knowing the source or context of the image/text it's hard to say.

That photo above may just be a reference so people know what they look like.

That sound more plausible, that or they did managed to safety move them together.

There was supposedly report of such mine that recently got debunked back in March

https://m.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-russia-using-butterfly-mines-in-ukraine/a-61120270

It look like a back and forth whodunnit, even a staged video of a Russian tank driving over it to “defuse” it in August.

Interesting, thanks for pointing this out.

The guy who shared this (Jonas Ohman) works in a respectable organisation (blue/yellow) which already sent around €35M to soldiers in the front lines and constantly posts content from there.

These must be broken in some way then so they don't explode - I don't think he would spread fake news.

Very average conversation in eastern Europe, lovely.

I was reading up on those mine and they were deliberately made not to be disarmed, that the only option is to blow them up.

Unless they found a way to disarm them without explosive.

You can pick them up and move them with a long plastic scoop. It's in the Wikipedia article linked to in the OP

The PFM-1(S) mines can be destroyed by mechanical or explosive means; they cannot be disarmed. The mines are generally moved using a scoop that is at least 3 meters long, and has soft materials used in its construction (for example, plastic).

Good find, that explain why there’s several images of them cluster together.

Ukraine working on attaching machine guns to their drones to kill Russian kamikaze drones.

God knows how they are supposed to target and track them and keep stable when firing, but Robot Wars/hackathon with real guns is amazing/terrifying; delete as appropriate.

https://twitter.com/KyryliukRoma/status/1582285711847219200?s=20&t=YiRLX74Ey8sIoXVKuAfICA

https://twitter.com/KyryliukRoma/status/1582364600628305920?s=20&t=YiRLX74Ey8sIoXVKuAfICA

God knows how they are supposed to target and track them and keep stable when firing,

A load of consumer drones have a built in optical tracking function that uses a neural net to automatically orientate the drone and it's gimball to stay centred on a moving object. You just have to designate the target on a touch screen and then the drone takes care of the rest.

Not suggesting they can stick a gun on a Mavic pro but I'd be very surprised if that code/tech wasn't easily spliced into a custom drone with a gun instead of a gimball.

Edit: just to add, the Mavic drones that have object tracking use the same tensorflow configuration that Zoom uses for blurring out backgrounds on video calls...seems even more likely that it would be easily adaptable for this sort of purpose if you had the resources.

Or even a gun on a gimball.

If you've been able to get steady shots from a moving helicopter for years, I doubt this is much of an issue for someone with enough brain and money

You need to aim off as well unless you are shooting from directly head on or behind. You aim ahead of the target…where it’s going to be when the bullets arrive (~500m/s).
You also have to allow for bullet drop.

Gaffa tape a gun that weighs 20% of the weight of the helicopter to the camera and tell me what happens to the picture quality when it's firing

The recoil would be a major factor.
Presumably the targets are slow and not taking evasive action you only need a fixed gun you just fly behind and above to miss debris

Commercial anti drone systems (mainly produced by Israeli companies) use a certain type of custom buckshot. You only need to clip a rotor or two after all.

I imagine the use of some sort of shotgun on a drone would be more practical than a machine gun. Easier to hit a target, recoil matters less as youre only taking one shot.

In fact I think the crazy US switchblade drones use a shotgun style warhead for these reasons.