They have hundreds of Su’s and MiGs, although there definitely will be issues with flight stress to the airframes. I wrote about it ages ago, but F-16s are rated for thousands of hours extra flight time, compared to the Russian equivalents. Not counting losses, of the Su and MiG variety with numbers greater than 30, they have 600+ according to reports. They probably have another 500 of the older variety.
What they’re definitely thin on now are tanks and armoured vehicles.
They’re seemingly preferring smaller, more mobile units on motorcycles now.
Surprised we haven’t had a 144th Lada Division yet. Strap a coule of RPGs and a Machine gun to the roof and you have arguably the most indestructible fighting vehicle ever made.
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Also supposedly AWACS aircraft. That will make the Ukraine Saab safer and give them a little breathing space in the air war you’d think.
So Top Gun:Maverick was realistic?!
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I wonder if they shipped all the Toyota technicals back home when Assad fell…
He was flying an F-14 and granted, it’s even possible for an F-14 or older aircraft to shoot down a jet if it’s been fitted out to fire modern missiles and is being guided by a secondary system that extends it’s range. Individually, apart from stealth, agility and speed, the biggest differences between fighters are to the onboard targeting systems that change their operational engagement range. If you enhance the targeting system using a more sophisticated one, you can take out targets ridiculously far away, before they can detect you. It’s why the Russian’s having their A-50’s destroyed is really damaging to their capabilities. They’ll have to use aircraft with worse capabilities or ground based which is easy to destroy.
So confirmed, the F-16 did score a kill and it was assisted by a Swedish supplied surveillance aircraft.
First batch of Australian Abrams has been sighted in Poland
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So obviously no tank is completely invincible, but this isn’t the first time that I’ve heard the Abrams being sent to Ukraine are not shoddy, but not exactly world class models.
This report seems to suggest that the one’s we’re giving to Ukraine are real lemons and given their the original M1A1 versions, are probably going to be wiped out without too much issue.
The report claims that our tanks are thoroughly worn out. Given we didn’t deploy any tanks to Iraq or Afghanistan since we got them, aside from sitting in storage and being used in training how are they worn out? Maybe we didn’t bother to repair them that well given they were not going to see active service in combat.
I would assume lack of maintenance. Also I don’t think they’re necessarily lemons, more so hey need to pick and choose how they’re being used. You’re not going to use these for full frontal attacks, but more than likely deploy them at chokepoints with heavy drone defences.
There’s talk now that Ukraine has pinned downed 50k Russians up north just outside of Sumy. Russian’s tried to force and offensive that’s now been halted. On the other hand 100k+ Russians have now been deployed to Pokrovsk. A few months ago, the town was on the verge of capture, however Ukrainian counterattacks managed to push Russian troops back and stabalize that front. Russia desperate to take it and continue pushing forwards.
Over the weekend, Russia launched it’s biggest air attack since the start of the war. There’s confirmed reports of a Ukrainian F-16 being shot down after knocking out 5-6 air targets himself.
In general though, there’s only been very small incremental gains by Russia. Think i’ve seen maybe 3-4 minor villages taken in the past 3 months and some of these are fairly heavily disputed. Ukraine and Russia have been steadily swapping POWs. Ukrainian POWs definitely looking like they’ve been in concentration camps, whereas Russian troops are looking healthy enough when returned.
Darwin award in 3…2…
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Christians moving to Russia? Seems like an unorthodox move
This is going to be random, but orthodox Russian churches are heavily on the rise in the US. The priests there are preaching a male-centric ultra conservative view that’s apparently resonating with a lot of incels.