Posted on 08/06/2022 1:27:09 PM PDT by Cathi
© Provided by Washington Examiner
Russians deploy Iranian drones into battlefield, Ukrainian government official says
Russia is now using drones purchased from Iran in Ukraine as the war nears its sixth month mark, according to an adviser for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian President’s Office, said on Friday that Iran had provided Russia with 46 drones, though it’s unclear if that’s the total number of drones Iran agreed to supply or if more are on its way, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s latest update.
Some of the drones are older-generation “Shahed 129” heavy strike drones, though it’s unclear how many of the total are among this version.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan first informed reporters about declassified U.S. intelligence that indicated a possible drone sale between Iran and Russia on July 11. At the time, he said Iran was prepared to supply them with “several hundred [unmanned aerial vehicles], including weapons capable UAVs on an expedited timeline.”
Sullivan also noted that Iran planned to train Russian forces to use the drones, though he was unable to say whether that had begun. He said the initial training was “slated to begin as soon as early July,” though the administration has not indicated since then whether that has commenced.
A senior military official and senior defense official declined to share with reporters any additional updates on the intelligence stream during the department’s most recent briefing with reporters on July 29.
Administration and defense officials have repeatedly implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Iran last month, must be getting desperate if he’s turning to Iran as a lifeline.
“Everybody wants to get into the act.” -J. Durante
Drones can serve many purposes, and have become rather common on the battlefield. I’m actually surprised Russia didn’t have a whole bunch of them before it decided to invade Ukraine.
Russia MOD:
During the counter-battery fight, a Ukrainian platoon of Alder multiple rocket launchers and American HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems were destroyed near the village of Pyatigorskoye, Kharkov region.
Iran Handed Over Combat Drones ‘Shahed 129’ To The Russian Federation
On Jul 24, 2022 16:17
A batch of Iranian drones was sent across the Caspian Sea to Russia. In the future, military cargo is planned to be delivered to the borders of Ukraine via Astrakhan and Volgograd.
This is reported by Censor.NET.
It is known that the basis of the cargo consists of heavy strike drones “Shahed 129”. Its development was based on the Israeli Hermes 450 drone and the American MQ-1 Predator.
The length of the fuselage of “Shahed 129” is 8 meters. The wingspan is 16 meters. The declared combat load is up to 400 kg. Flight speed – up to 150 km/h with a radius of up to 200 km. The declared flight range is up to 1700 km. The developers claim that the drone can stay in the air for up to 24 hours.
It can be armed with Sadid-1 anti-tank missiles (a copy of the Israeli Spike-ER) or a high-precision planning bomb with a fragmentation warhead – Sadid-345.
It is worth noting that practically nothing is known about the actual combat characteristics of Iranian drones, since they have not yet been used in full-scale war. Therefore, the capabilities of “Shahed 129” may differ from those declared.
Creating a military is a build strategy. You build the military to fight whatever sort of mission you think you’ll face. Russia built a navy, an air force and a missile force for their nukes. Then, with their peacetime military, meaning not a lot of ground forces, they went on a land invasion. And a hundred thousand, or even two hundred thousand men are not enough to invade a country of forty-four million where you can’t create air superiority. They have the wrong military for the task at hand. The navy...useless. The air force...absent without leave. The missile force...useless. What they lack are trained infantry, which is why their tanks have taken such large losses. Russia has found itself in a bit of a bind. That’s why they suddenly have to beg Iran, Turkey, China and North Korea for any scraps they can get. Even if they get whatever they’ve asked for, it will take time to integrate whatever they get into their force structure. And, a hundred thousand North Koreans? Good luck with command and control.
Generals, US military planners, and defense contractors are having daily orgasms over this “free” war zone. Try out your latest stuff, learn from the enemy, more money than God being blown every day. Blow it all, guys! Free money, free ammo, and nobody cares cuz US tranny troops aren’t the fodder.
*spit*
You are not alone in being surprised. I think most "experts" also thought Russia had a significant inventory of combat drones, on par with the US. It seems that like many Russian weapons displayed at air and weapons shows, Russian combat drones were mostly prototypes for display, hoping for foreign orders to fund the program. When China, India and others don't buy them, they never go into production.
Don’t be surprised “the fog of war” is real. We are just being admitted to that Russians are using unmanned aircraft for surveillance and combat right now. The news sources are just admitting it now. I mean with what the news reports now, you would think Russia has no more military left alive by this point. Who knows?
In September last year, Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed the location of the Kashan air base and said it was being used to train Tehran’s regional proxies to operate advanced drones.
According to Gantz, the UAV base is located north of the city of Isfahan in central Iran and serves as “a linchpin of the Iranian effort to export aerial terror to the region.”
A Shahed-129 drone was launched from Lebanon by technicians from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in October 2012, and managed to transmit photos of preparations for a joint Israeli-US military drill as well as Israeli ballistic missile sites, airfields and even possibly the nuclear reactor in Dimona before it was shot down by the IDF, according to a Sunday Times report.
Israeli reports at the time disputed the revelation, saying the then-new long-range drone was relatively old-fashioned and incapable of relaying surveillance information back to its operators in real-time.
Sounds like no one bought into Russia’s marketing campaign, and decided to pass on the product, and look elsewhere.
Sounds like no one bought into Russia’s marketing campaign, and decided to pass on the product, and look elsewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNzh7EoxyD4
Larry Johnson:
The covert action part let me just give you some context. I joined the CIA in September of 85. I was in what was called the Career Trainee program and that program was designed to bring in a select group of new CIA hires and give them a complete overview of everything and what the agency did and as part of that we were given 8 week internships where we went to different parts of the organization. In my case I was put into the AF/AN task force. This was the directorate entity operate that was running the covert action in Afghanistan when the Soviets were there.
The unit I was working with our job was to create video tapes and plant magazine stories and then create a narrative and my one contribution then was we had T-shirts printed up that were passed out on the beaches of Monte video and Punta del esta. And it showed all these forlorn children refugees, women and it said, “These children can’t go home for Christmas.” Now apart from the fact they are Muslim and didn’t celebrate Christmas, the point was we’re putting that message out there. They’re newspaper articles being planted and the one newspaper guy hated the CIA, he was convinced the CIA was behind everything and yea, we were putting stories in his magazine he didn’t realize were from us.
But, there is that narrative; but you reach a point that you can’t keep putting lipstick on the pig and and telling them it is Marilyn Monroe because the reality emerges and that’s the thing that has been frustrating me from the outset on this. They kept saying the Ukrainians are doing this, the Ukrainians are doing that and this era of social media....where’s the evidence? Because you can find ample evidence on social media on the Ukraine side of the bodies being buried....the horrific casualties going back. You don’t see that on the Russian side. And they try and say, “That’s cuz Russia is a totalitarian society. And as I increasingly try to remind at least Americans, on my side of the pond, we’ve got more political prisoners than Russia so spare me that sanctimonious bulls__t about “America the free” and “Russia the Dictatorship.” We’ve flip-flopped. It’s almost the exact opposite.
So what we face now is we have not seen since the start of the conflict on the 24th of February....we’ve not seen an armored unit of Ukrainian forces backed with infantry moving towards a particular objective and Russian troops running with their hands in the air in the opposite direction. Haven’t seen it! That to me is the tell. You know, all that Ukraine has at this point is they are hunkered down in their foxholes; they’ve got artillery they’re lobbing that; they’re shooting some missiles, but they have yet to organize an offensive. I know you’ve said it yourself....you keep hearing them saying that there is going to be a counter offensive and it you had a dollar for every time they have said that you would be a wealthy man.
But, we’re not seeing that so it is unfortunate that our military intelligence and our civilian intelligence have become so compromised that they are not able to sit down and actually tell the cold hard truth that Russia, in spite of going in with 200,000, maybe 250,000 against 600,000. That is even the reverse of conventional military strategy which says that if you’re an offensive force attacking a defensive force you want an at least 3 to 1 advantage....3 to 1. And in this case the Russians....they go with a 1 to 3 advantage; I mean it is remarkable! When the history of this is written what Russia has accomplished in these last 4 months I think it will be something that future war schools will teach because nobody in history has done this!
“And, a hundred thousand North Koreans? Good luck with command and control.”
They’ll surrender or defect as soon as someone offers them something to eat that is more appealing than borscht or cold and thin potato gruel.
“We are just being admitted to that Russians are using unmanned aircraft for surveillance and combat right now. The news sources are just admitting it now.”
They didn’t have to admit anything: Most of the world just assumed Russia already had those assets and had been employing them.
Everybody is testing their weapons in Ukraine!
I doubt the narrative mate
During the counter-battery fight, a Ukrainian platoon of Alder multiple rocket launchers and American HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems were destroyed near the village of Pyatigorskoye, Kharkov region.
Russia MOD said 4 were destroyed before they were even in Ukraine, and 38 of 8 in use had been destroyed 2 weeks later.
But please tell us of the glorious orcs and their mission from God to kill and murder Ukrainians.
Your Russian paymasters only lie and can only tell lies to their willing gullible puppets.
Hmmm...
“Banzai!” = “Allahu Ackbar”???
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