RuZZian Tank losses RunningTotal: 1420
October 2022 – 213
September 2022 - 217
August 2022 – 74
July 2022 – 108
June 2022 – 67
May 2022 – 148
April 2022 – 243
Feb 24 - March 2022 – 350
RuZZian Artillery losses Running Total: 372
October 2022 – 57
September 2022 - 73
August 2022 – 21
July 2022 – 21
June 2022 – 18
May 2022 – 20
April 2022 – 52
Feb 24 - March 2022 – 110
Allen
@SquireDigital
https://mobile.twitter.com/SquireDigital/status/1584723107172208640
Videos at the link.
“1/ Israel may have delivered its first weapons system to Ukraine. The ‘Smartshooter’ interception system can be installed on large drones and small aircraft, and is meant for the Shahed-136 Iranian suicide drones.
2/ We may have seen a video of a test 6 days ago.
3/ The Israeli system that operates on the principle of ‘One Shot - One Hit’. The system is operated by artificial intelligence and a system of advanced radars.
4/ Thanks to @TreasChest for finding the Debka story, and uncovering that they are sent to Ukraine through Poland, to abide by their Russian no agression pact.
5/ Here is a link to the underlying system, similar to the US “Tracking Point”.
6/ Here’s a video from the company:
7/ Iranian drones are made of plastic infused cardboard & a wooden propellers. They use a Chinese copy of a 50hp 1936 VW engine. They only cost $20,000, so AA missiles are far more expensive. ‘Smartshooter’ destroys them for the cost of a few bullets.
8/ TrackingPoint and SmartShooter don’t mechanically track targets. Instead sensors calculate distance, speed, air pressure, wind, gravity, & temperature. Then wait for random movement to shoot at the exact moment when the bullet will hit the target.”
Europe expected to have an unusually warm winterIt's been in the 60s for a couple of weeks. Last week it got to 71F. Right now it is 63F at 5pm.
With the Russians it’s “There’s plenty more where those came from”.
With the Ukrainians it’s “Not so much”.
An article from the Drive (https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-russias-ka-52-attack-helicopter-fleet-has-been-massacred), based on Oryx and the UK MoD, makes some observations about Russian attack helicopters:
Russia’s Ka-52 Attack Helicopter Fleet Has Been Massacred.
“At least 23 of Russia’s Ka-52 Alligator helicopters have been shot down or lost since the Feb. 24 invasion, the U.K. MoD assesses. British officials say that represents more than 25 percent of the Russian Air Force’s in-service fleet of 90 Ka-52s and “nearly half of Russia’s total helicopter losses in Ukraine.” Prior to the war, the Russian Air Force had a total fleet of about 120 Ka-52s”…
“Russian attack helicopters have likely suffered particular attrition from Ukrainian man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), while the helicopters frequently operate with less consistent top-cover from combat jets than they would expect under Russian military doctrine,” the U.K. MoD said. “Russia is still failing to maintain adequate air superiority in order to reliably carry out effective fixed-wing close air support near the front line, and its artillery ammunition is running low. Russian commanders are likely increasingly resorting to conducting high-risk attack helicopter missions as one of the few options available to provide close support for troops in combat.”…
“These helicopters have also been worked severely over eight months of perpetual combat operations. What concessions Russia has made in terms of deferred maintenance is also an unknown, but regardless, more will likely be lost to mechanical failure alone as the war grinds on. Also, full mission-capable rates are likely to be impacted more severely over time due to sanctions that have limited Russia’s access to high-tech components.”
Pilot losses were not addressed in the article, but since they cannot eject, they likely track with shoot downs. Pilot behavior likely changes as loss rates go up this high as well.
Just as we have been tracking the attrition of Russia’s tank and Artillery systems in this thread, Air and missile assets are also being heavily drawn down. In some cases, like tanks, we are probably halfway through already.
Different systems, might break operationally at different levels, due to different drivers, like combat losses, wear out, key personnel skill losses, component shortages, or effective enemy countermeasures. But from this point on, more of these Russian combat systems are going to reaching fracture points. As we get into the second half we will likely be seeing the worse half of their gear and people.
Another Russian Ka-52 Attack Helicopter shot down today in the South.
Everyone of these low density Airframes is significant, for support of the highly contested close battles, that are arguably the main event in this war.
Ukraine: military situation update with maps, Oct 25, 2022
(’Orc’ is associated with the various hoards of 13th century Mongol invaders, as well as LOTR evil villains)
War in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2QApi8G2TKc8NZmeDWSUg/videos
Artillery (key to success in this war), Fuller explanation of Orc military structure, Other Bonus articles - see previous postings in “Attack on Europe” (FR title search).
(Numbered printed material below - Some of the items below may be out of date, and not updated yet)
••Denotes Transcribed Dialogue. The entirety of the analysis is from a Ukrainian guy named War in Ukraine’s daily video - I only transcribe it. Extras are just that - from other sites, or my comments marked (Edit: .... )
-—> Current to date and past MAPS: <——
https://militaryland.net/
———————————————————————————————————————
Extras:
-—> Ukraine Situation Report: Russia’s Ka-52 Attack Helicopter Fleet Has Been Massacred <——
Ka-52s have taken the brunt of rotary-wing losses during the invasion and their relevance is waning as Ukraine’s air defenses improve.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-russias-ka-52-attack-helicopter-fleet-has-been-massacred
Excerpts:
A group of 30 Democrat lawmakers is retracting a letter they collectively sent to President Joe Biden on Monday asking that his administration reduce military aid for Ukraine with “proactive diplomacy for a realistic ceasefire framework. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington who leads the Progressive Caucus, released a statement on Oct. 25 saying the letter was drafted months ago and published by mistake.
—
Ukraine’s state nuclear power enterprise, Energoatom, which operates all four of the country’s nuclear power plants, said Russia’s statement indicates Moscow plans an “act of nuclear terrorism.” In a statement published on its website, the company suggests Russian engineers at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant are “carrying out unauthorized construction works on the territory of the Dry Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility (DSNFSF).”
“The Russian military conduct these works by themselves, in secret. Ukrainian personnel and the IAEA representatives present at the ZNPP site are not allowed to the construction site,” Energoatom said in the statement. “174 containers are stored at the DSNFSF, each of them containing 24 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel. The destruction of these containers as a result of detonation will lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometers of the surrounding area.”
—
-—> Same Type Of Rotax Engines Used In Iranian Drones Targeted In Bizarre Theft Wave <——
After Ukraine displayed an Iranian drone with a Rotax 912 motor, the global targeting of those engines by criminals is even more intriguing.
Where Iran got its drone engines
—
-—> This Quad Minigun-Armed WWII Turret Spewing Rounds Is Metal As Hell <——
Four miniguns on an old M45 quad machine gun mount blasting away at a combined 12,000 rounds-per-minute is really something to see and hear.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/this-quad-minigun-armed-wwii-turret-spewing-rounds-is-metal-as-hell
Home accessory
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Summary:
No major changes
Ukrainian pressure on North Lugansk front and west of Lysychansk.
Key areas:
- Oskil river area: no changes.
- North Donbass area: no changes.
- Central Donbass (Donetsk West): no changes.
- Zaporizhya: no changes.
- Kherson bridgehead: no changes.
———————————————————————————————————————
••General Strategic Developments:
••Ukraine:
The former head of Ukrainian Central Bank, who step down on October 4th, left the country, now has a warrant for him issued by Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau for embezzlement of funds.
The Parliament & Central Bank all of this group work as a one system, and its just not about personalities, it doesn’t matter who comes there, they will continue doing the same things - stealing public funds, and then leaving. He went to Greece to start his own real estate development business; this is not an exception, this is the norm.
There is a new head of The Central Bank in Ukraine who is in a pocket of Andre Yermak, I discussed this person on July 9th. There is strong allegation and strong indirect evidence that he is working for Russia. The reason I don’t have proof - nobody has proof, but if you if you look at all of the indirect evidence combined its very clear where everything goes.
You have a revolving door in Ukrainian government where people steal and then they go west - very similar to Afghanistan where the president was embezzling funds, corruption was rampant, and then the country fell apart. It was rotten from within, and nobody wanted to defend it.
The only difference in Ukraine’s case is among the citizens, they won’t defend the country, they not really defending the government that’s elected in Ukraine. As a result, the economy is its difficult situation, but there could have been things done that allowed people to take this thing in their own hands, and there will be enough people who would figure out how to be successful, even in this extremely difficult circumstances.
Instead, the Ukrainian government was carrying out Marxist policies in Ukraine before the war, but especially since the beginning of the war. I was very critical about many economic actions; as a result you have double whammy for the Ukrainian economy. The Ukrainian government itself is the most dangerous one and then the Russian attacks.
You have that economy as a result Ukrainian president goes West and says please give us US$38 billion to our state budget for 2023. For reference, the Ukrainian state budget before the war usually was about $45-$46 billion; the economy is wiped out - there is almost nothing left ‘alive’ in the country, and then he also asked for additional $17 billion for reconstruction. Ukraine definitely needs money for reconstruction, however, the problem is at least half of that money in the hands of these people will end up in bank accounts in somewhere in Switzerland.
The biggest problem of how to help Ukraine, and not to enrich peoples, that’s the biggest challenge. However, the real solution to Ukrainian problem is internal investors - there issue is to free up economy from all of the red tape which is Ukraine has plenty of, there will be enough internal investors who will invest and rebuild Ukraine, but that system doesn’t work for the current political class that that runs Ukraine, because then they cannot enrich themselves without doing anything. That’s why this search for external resources, because they can steal from those resources - its just very simple primitive motivation among those people.
••Russia:
In Russia for those who are curious what Russia and other Russian citizens save money or how they preserve their savings is by buying US dollars or Euros is not that easy these days in Russia, and so what they do, they buy gold bars.
Russian mines produces a lot of gold & they’re readily available. People buy those gold bars even though Russia mines a lot of gold, and I discussed this probably like two weeks ago that Russian gold miners were asking government please buy gold from us because right now sanctions and its hard to sell outside; there’s plenty of gold which is very interesting, but there is at the same time there are shortages of gold bars so the ordering people have hard time getting those.
••Russia logistics:
The Crimean Bridge, which is down, & connects Crimea which connects Ukrainian territory with the Russian territory with Krasnadarski Scry; there is ethnic Ukrainian majority there, because it was populated by Ukrainians, even though there was quite a bit of genocide, but there’s still significant but not large majority but close to 50% ethnic Ukrainians there.
The problem was a Crimean Peninsula: what happened is if you remember that the bridge is no longer usable, neither railroad, nor road. You can ravel by car, but not semi-trailer trucks, and no railroad carriages that carry commodities. Right now there are problems in Crimea, because there is not enough supply of everything, because the bridge is blocked, and you only have ferries which are tiny through put, its not enough for what you need.
For example when there are a thousand semi-trailer trucks parked on the other side of the bridge in parking lots there for 20-30 kilometers area around it. It’s a huge traffic jam of trucks that cannot get to Crimea, and because they try to use ferries. Russian side is apparently very hesitant to use this land bridge. Effectively the land bridge is not really working, because there is a lot of activity by Ukrainian guerrilla groups or partisan groups; they are not just locals & there is a lot of organized Special Forces groups.
The way it works is the core group goes into the territory, and they use the locals to carry out whatever they need to do. Then they grow in size by incorporating locals who support them; it works as a one system and its not safe simply to to use this land bridge. This also means that that the supply to Kherson bridgehead is under under question; there is some bare minimum being supplied, there’s no question about it, but its its difficult.
••Europe:
The new prime minister of Italy is on the from the right side of the political spectrum. I said before that the right/left is an artificial divide, but she came out and strongly supported Ukraine, despite the hopes on the Russian side that they will be more pro-Russian. They clearly confirmed that they are in favor of supporting Ukraine
There is a continuation of that news about the Progressives in the U,S which is the far left wing of the Democratic party; they recalled their petition to the US president to start to push for peace negotiation, which is code for ‘force Ukraine to like accept status war and let’s just end this war, doesn’t matter what’s gonna happen’.
This is a very short-sighted view - I’m not not going to even discuss it, but that’s not gonna solve the war, its just gonna mean the war will blow up in a year or two in much larger again in the same way.
This is because for us, Russia needs entire Ukraine with Ukraine, Russia can become major player, but without Ukraine its very difficult to do. Ukraine is a key component, and they obviously don’t understand that, but what I’m trying to say is these requests from far right and far left where just probing attacks; they’re much stronger attack, they will all come back, it will be a stronger attack down the road.
Probably in January or February where there will be a really strong push to to force Ukraine to accept whatever the terms are and close the deal. This is gonna only escalate down the road, because for the majority of the population strongly associates inflation or decline in living standards with the war.
They don’t look deeper about what’s really causing these problems at the much deeper level. This is a knee-jerk reaction ‘let’s just stop this and and hope that things will return to normal’ which they want.
Also Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy structure, it was relatively quiet day. Ukraine energy distribution system is still alive living on band-aids - for how long it will be able to survive, nobody knows, especially the testing time will be winter by winter.
••Dirty Atomic Bomb:
This conversation continuing conversation about this dirty atomic bomb that Ukraine allegedly is trying to make, and do something with it. I just want to straighten out about capabilities: Ukraine has capabilities to make that, and it has capabilities to make real nuclear bomb.
Ukraine has a deposit of uranium which is iNorth of the city of Zaporizhya, it has technical capabilities in Kharviv to put everything together, and then they have Ukraine has the rocket manufacturing capability near Dnipro city. All of this it was used to be part of the Soviet Union’s nuclear manufacturing complex, and it remained afterward; these capabilities not being used.
Ukraine is not really seeking any of that; there’s really no point for Ukraine to use a dirty nuclear bomb, as there is no incentive to use it on its own territory; nobody want to do it for obvious reasons. At the same time from the rational perspective let’s just look from the Russian perspective when they have incentive to do that.;
In which case, if Russia is actively taking territories in Ukraine, and in general they want to take over Ukraine, they don’t want to do that. There is no incentive for Russia to make a dirty nuclear bomb; the only incentive for Russia to do this dirty nuclear bomb is, if they decide they’re going to withdraw from Ukraine completely or they are losing the war.
Let’s say, if they are retreating, and they they need to stay on defensive, and they feel they’re gonna lose the war, there is incentive for the Russian side to do that, because the logic is very simple: let’s just blow out a bunch of those from north to south of Ukraine and create natural barrier for the advances of Ukrainian troops and which Russia fears more than the NATO forces or the western forces.
The logic goes: ‘if we cannot capture Ukraine, let’s destroy it, let’s just create a no man’s land’. That creates a natural barrier between the West and Russia. The one another natural barrier is Belarus up north & its fully controlled by Russia. Since Russia cannot control Ukraine, so why don’t we just do that thing.
The US 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Brigade of it was deployed for the first time to Romania, and there were statements made by the publicity officer saying that the West can get involved with the troops in Ukraine, and then remarks by the commander of the 101st Airborne Division saying, ‘we can go there’. That makes that case for Russia much stronger, since there was an official U.S official that came out said, ‘no we’re never gonna get involved, no US, German, or UK troops’.
That’s not going to happen, but this makes Russian side extremely cautious, and thinking, ‘yep, this is gonna happen, so we need to create a barrier’. That’s their simple logic in this case.
••North Luhansk’:
Ukrainian troops continued their attacks from yesterday; this looks more like probing attacks, they’re putting pressure today. Ukrainian troops attacked towards attempted to liberate Kuzemivka; they were not successful. Russian sources report that Ukrainian side is accumulating resources here to renew the the offensive and there’s other evidence of that happening.
••North Donbas:
There was very strong Ukrainian attack today towards Zolotarivka as the goal, which put Russian forces in a very difficult situation, based on our information, it was contained.
If you go back and like really look at this whole situation, this whole area as one piece, you can even call it one front line, because its all very interconnected; the idea is twofold: one to attack and move from the north to south, and then the other one is to go straight east and liberate Luchans’k can liberate this whole North Luhansk’ area.
That’s why I’m saying there are more and more indications that Ukrainian side is preparing to make decisive moves in this whole area; the whole plan is somewhat unclear at this point, but the big picture you understand, and that’s why I mentioned about that Wagner line that was being built by the Wagner mercenaries the straight south of Seversky Donets.
They also understand that this is open flank, and if these Ukrainian troops clear out this territory, they can move south, and the whole thing is going to collapse. It’ll be a total panic retreat towards Russia towards or if the Russian troops will not do that, they can be encircled - this could be an extremely, potentially, dangerous move for the Russian side.
That’s why they were building the defensive line; there are many reports that its not finished, its just patchy, but its not about whether its finished or not, its more like Russian command realizes the problem - whether they do right things or not the right things, that’s another question, but its very obvious and clear to both sides that this is a tremendous opportunity for Ukrainian side and a tremendous threat for the Russian side.
••Central Donbas:
Ukrainian troops tried to counter attack - more like a tactical local attack, what this tells us is that Russian troops are penetrating far enough that they are starting to split the defensive line of Ukrainian troops into like two islands, which creates a problem for coherence of defensive system. It may fall apart and create opportunity for a Russian side.
As a result, Ukrainian troops are counter-attacking to recapture their lost territories, to regain coherence of the defensive line as a whole. Which means that the situation is a little bit uncomfortable for Ukrainian side, and that’s the point of those counter attacks. The outcome of that attack: it didn’t go to anywhere, it was a fatal counter attack.
••Kherson Bridgehead:
Things here are also fairly quiet. Ukrainian side is focused on disrupting the supply lines, and there were indications that Russian troops might be with drawing but it doesn’t seem this is materializing; it looks like they will not leave without the fight - if there is no push, then they’ll try to stay; if there is a strong push, strong enough, then they will leave.