• tal@lemmy.today
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    1 month ago

    Ironically, the S-400 was designed to have an anti-missile capability, but it obviously doesn’t work. Russia’s S-400s can’t defend nearby friendly forces—and they also can’t defend themselves.

    Specifically, an anti-ballistic-missile capability. It’s easier to shoot down cruise missiles than ballistic missiles.

    Yeah, while caveat that we don’t actually know for sure that there’s a 0% intercept rate, it does seem pretty clear that, if the rate is non-zero, ATACMS is certainly having no problem taking out S-400 batteries, when the S-400 was designed as a counter for weapons like ATACMS.

    I remember watching that video that someone in Ukraine put out a few weeks ago with the glowing-eye trollface overlay…

    https://x.com/ukraine_map/status/1793897701194502337/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1793897701194502337&currentTweetUser=ukraine_map

    …where Ukraine filmed a couple of cluster ATACMS shots obliterating an S-400 battery and thinking “well, that’s about as bad as it gets for Russia. If it can’t counter ATACMS missiles heading straight at the S-400 itself, Russia’s only options are going to be destroying the ATACMS on the ground or just absorbing whatever damage Ukraine can do with them.”

    And absorbing them is gonna suck, because it’s a pretty good bet that Ukraine is gonna use them to destroy defenses that could counter other weapons systems to permit those to operate.

    An awful lot of the footage that we’ve seen recently is of attacks on Russian air defenses. That means that it’s a pretty good bet that Ukraine intends air attacks.

    Some Russian observers are worried that much worse attacks are coming. If the Ukrainians are following American strike doctrine, attacks on air-defense batteries come first. After that, “aviation based on the F-16 comes into play, under the wings of which there is a wide range of ammunition,” one Russian blogger noted in a missive translated by Estonian analyst War Translated.

    The Ukrainian air force is getting 85 ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16s—and already has radar-homing missiles and precision glide-bombs for the F-16s to employ in combat.

    Yeah. And it seems likely that JASSM-ER is in the upcoming mix too.

    https://en.defence-ua.com/news/what_are_the_300_500_km_range_missiles_ukraine_expects_alongside_the_f_16-9418.html

    The AGM-158 JASSM is the most likely, but not the only option, when it comes to missiles with a range of 300-500 km

    Ukraine may acquire F-16 fighter jets, and it is already a matter of the relatively short-term perspective, along with missiles with a range of 300-500 km.

    “In the upcoming military aid packages, Ukraine expects to receive F-16 aircraft and missiles with a range of 300–500 kilometers, enabling the Armed Forces of Ukraine to achieve even greater success on the battlefield and liberate our territory from the enemy,” as Lieutenant General Serhii Naiev, the Commander of the Joint Forces stated.

    Early-on in the conflict, when Russia was doing mass missile strikes and dropping artillery across Mariupol and the like – I remember images of one missile that targeted a field of Ukrainian solar panels, probably on a generic command to hit electrical infrastructure – I remember commenting that yeah, it has an impact now, causes some damage, but Russia may regret not having those munitions later on if they need them for actual military targets. Same thing during the campaign against Ukraine’s grain infrastructure later.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Like many Russian weapons systems, they appear to have over-promised and under-delivered.

      Meanwhile, NAFO be like

      patriot only goes like 75 miles 🥺👉👈

      …or does it? 😘

      We prefer to let the enemy fuck around and find out. Keeps things more interesting.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Early-on in the conflict, when Russia was doing mass missile strikes and dropping artillery across Mariupol and the like – I remember images of one missile that targeted a field of Ukrainian solar panels, probably on a generic command to hit electrical infrastructure

      Russia was banking on terror itself being a weapon. The brutality of Russian soldiers on Ukrainian civilians (and especially children) underscores this. I don’t know why Russia though this would work. Ukrainians were unarmed during Euromaidan and still went up against and won against superior equipped forces.