Ukraine Notes
Russia loses their flag ship of the Black Sea fleet! A prisoner swap, talk about trucks and anti-tank rockets. Canon DSLRs and drones? And lots of other stuff.
The Guardian reports that an important railroad bridge in Russia near Belgorad, just four miles from the Ukraine border, has been badly damaged, apparently by an explosion. Ukraine continues to deny conducting any operations outside of its territory, including the fuel dump attack.
Ukraine shot down a Russian Orlan-10 drone. They then made and released an “unboxing” video of them taking it apart. The results were... amusing. The camera? A Canon DSLR velcroed in-place with something glued on to prevent it from turning off in-flight. The fuel tank cap was from a bottle of mineral water. So not quite as high-tech as they were expecting, more high-school tech, perhaps. A quote from a Forbes article: “As Russian military commentator Viktor Suvorov said when Americans criticized low-tech Soviet hardware: “A stupid weapon which works is not a stupid weapon.””
What is the Donbas? A BBC article explained it as Ukraine’s old coal and steel-producing region in the east, which would be valuable to Putin. It would also give him a road/rail network to his illegally-acquired Crimea. It encompasses the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and runs from the city of Mariupol in the south all the way to the northern border. Putin has had subversives in the area fighting a ‘rebellion’, setting the stage for the current war ever since he shaved off Crimea. Mariupol, as you may know, has been under naval and artillery bombardment to the point that the entire city is pretty much rubble. In an ironic twist, and keeping in mind that pretty much all of Ukraine speaks Russian, Mariupol was one of the most Pro-Russian cities in the country. They have since changed their opinion.
It is estimated that Russia has suffered 30,000 casualties - that’s combined dead, wounded, captured - since the war started. They are trying to outnumber the Ukrainian soldiers 5:1 on the ground for the upcoming fight in the Donbas region which is expected to start possibly by the end of the week. Two problems: the defenders are very well dug-in, and it’s mud season!
The train station where more than 50 people were killed in shelling? Expert investigators say evidence such as blast patterns and scorching, along with interviews with witnesses have led them to conclude that cluster bomb munitions were used. These were outlawed by treaty in 2008, among the countries that did not sign the ban are Russia, Ukraine, and the good ol’ USA.
Computer security researchers have been keeping a close eye on Ukraine’s remaining public utility infrastructure. Recently Russia tried to launch an attack that would take down Ukraine’s power grid, but the defenders had detected and neutralized it and nothing happened. And we now know that there is a new player in the APT game (Advanced Persistent Threats): Sandworm. The attack was set to go off on 8 April and contained the usual collection of malware and disk wipers. This is the third time Sandworm has tried to knock out Ukraine’s grid, and the third time they’ve failed.
Let's talk about tanks. Russia has lost A LOT of tanks in this war. Why? A very simple answer: advances in anti-tank man-portable rockets. It started with the LAW: the Light Anti-Tank Rocket. It would do a number on a tank real bad. And you would reach a point of diminishing return in increasing the thickness of the armor, which would strain the engine and slow down its mobility, making it vulnerable to other tanks. An answer was found in what's known as Reactive Armor. Those are the rectangular thick pads you see in the photos of Russian tanks. Those are actually explosive charges. The warhead of the rocket hits the reactive armor, the armor explodes, blows up the rocket, and doesn't really hurt the tank! EXCEPT we now have the second generation of LAWs! The new generation is smarter. The Javelin missiles that the USA is providing are especially nasty: they shoot towards the tank, and then when they're close - they pop up and drop down on the top of the tank vertically, where there is no ablative armor, and blow the hell out of it. The British NLAW, New LAW, uses a different approach. It flies above the tank and detonates above the tank, where the armor is thinnest. And the USA and UK are sending lots and lots to Ukraine, making the Russian tankers very unhappy and dead. These are also very effective against armored personnel carriers, AKA armored fighting vehicles (pretty much synonyms) which are armored against infantry rifles and such, but will not stand up against a tank's main gun nor against sustained heavy machine gun fire. And second-generation LAWs? Forget it. Tissue paper. Ukraine says they've destroyed 680 tanks, a military analysis thinktank puts the number nearer 460 with another 2,000 armored vehicles lost. It was estimated that Russia started the war with some 2,700 main battle tanks, and as I wrote before, their ready reserves are extremely unreliable for replacements and repairs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61021388
The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of their Black Sea fleet, was struck by two Neptune anti-ship missile and caused an ammunition explosion and the crew to abandon her. The ship was attacked in the Odessa region, which is the SW Black Sea port where Mariupol is the NE port with Crimea between them. Russian news admitted the evacuation but are saying it is due to a fire caused by exploding ammunition. Damage like this will probably take it out of service for some time. The Lithuanian defense minister says the ship has sunk, Russia denies. The Moskva is the ship from the start of the war that ordered the Snake Island garrison to surrender and was told to “Go to hell!” It was built in Ukraine in the 1980s and would be lovely if it was sunk by them.
It is now reported by the BBC that Russian news sources are saying the Moskva sank while being towed to a port in Crimea! Interestingly, a Pentagon official earlier today said that the ship was moving under its own power. Ukraine says this is the fourth ship they have attacked. I don't know if the Neptunes were used in the other attacks, this particular cruise missile has a range of 175 miles, so ships can't park too close to shore if they want to stay safe.
Thirty Ukrainians have been repatriated through a prisoner swap, including a small number of civilians which included a woman. This is apparently the fourth such prisoner swap.
From a BBC article, Russia claims two Ukrainian helicopters attacked a residential neighborhood. Several injured, no dead, homes destroyed. Ukraine denies, Russia will retaliate if these attacks continue, blah blah blah. I’m seriously thinking this is Russia conducting false flag attacks against its own people to give itself a fig leaf’s cover.
Russia has started jamming GPS signals in Ukraine. They have their own system called Glonass, seems only fair to return the favor. GPS - and we're talking the American version here - is a system of 24 satellites above the earth in varying orbits. Receivers calculate the differences in signals from different orbits to determine where that receiver is. Theoretically at least four satellites are above any place on the planet at any time. Because of the height of the orbits, the signals are very weak and easy to jam. Prior to Bill Clinton's presidency in the '90s, the signals were exclusive to military use, he signed a presidential order to degrade part of the signal's accuracy and declassify it for civilian use. It's more than accurate enough for civilian navigation, while the more classified and higher precision signal is still in use by the military.
An excellent article via CNN talked about the value of trucks to the Russian military and the problem it is causing them. The basic issue is that all supplies move via trucks: ammunition, food, medical supplies, even men. Trucks have an effective range of about 90 miles from their depot, and Russia has invaded a country the size of the state of Texas. That means having to build a lot of forward bases. Additionally, Russia doesn't believe in palletizing supplies and using forklifts, so instead of one forklift and one pallet of 16 tank or artillery shells, you've got two men carrying one shell, making for a much slower loading process. Slower loading process means truck is sitting in one places for a lot longer. Sitting truck = sitting duck. It takes about six months to build a new truck, meanwhile other trucks are being destroyed. And we know about the state of the Russian ready reserve, i.e. they're not remotely ready to be put into service. The Russians have an answer to their truck shortage: steal them from civilians. The problem is that civi trucks are not rated for military use: they don't have the carrying capacity or the off-road suspensions, nor are they modified to carry the special configurations of gear that the trucks sometimes have to do. They just don't work. The article went on to talk about Russia's logistics chain, including their resupply and trucks and their maintenance, being in the hands of their conscripts. Their conscripts are in for a one year term. Then they're gone. That's not enough time to learn the job, much less to do it well. In the American military, the truck fleet is in the hands of non-commissioned officers who have a career path and lots of training and advancement opportunities and good pay.
Brittney Griner is a long-term story that needs reporting. She is a WNBA star and normally plays for the Phoenix Mercury. In her career she has won a college championship, WNBA championship, Euroleague title, and an Olympic gold medal. Few men have a comparable record. But because women's sports pay so poorly, during the WNBA off-season she plays in leagues in China, and in Russia. She makes a lot more money in those two countries than she does in the USA, she's treated much more like the sports hero that she is over there. As she was leaving Russia in February, airport security "found" cannabis in her luggage. This is a very common tactic used by Russia when something bad is going on or about to happen: grab a citizen of one of the countries involved, lay up some charges, throw them in prison. You now have a convenient negotiating lever. There's simply no way to know if the drugs are legitimately hers or were planted by security services as a reason to imprison her, but in prison she has sat for two months now. And if convicted on charges, she could sit for a decide. She gets visits from her legal counsel and U.S. State Department officials to check on her well-being, otherwise almost nothing is known about her case.
The Guardian reports that an important railroad bridge in Russia near Belgorad, just four miles from the Ukraine border, has been badly damaged, apparently by an explosion. Ukraine continues to deny conducting any operations outside of its territory, including the fuel dump attack.
Ukraine shot down a Russian Orlan-10 drone. They then made and released an “unboxing” video of them taking it apart. The results were... amusing. The camera? A Canon DSLR velcroed in-place with something glued on to prevent it from turning off in-flight. The fuel tank cap was from a bottle of mineral water. So not quite as high-tech as they were expecting, more high-school tech, perhaps. A quote from a Forbes article: “As Russian military commentator Viktor Suvorov said when Americans criticized low-tech Soviet hardware: “A stupid weapon which works is not a stupid weapon.””
What is the Donbas? A BBC article explained it as Ukraine’s old coal and steel-producing region in the east, which would be valuable to Putin. It would also give him a road/rail network to his illegally-acquired Crimea. It encompasses the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and runs from the city of Mariupol in the south all the way to the northern border. Putin has had subversives in the area fighting a ‘rebellion’, setting the stage for the current war ever since he shaved off Crimea. Mariupol, as you may know, has been under naval and artillery bombardment to the point that the entire city is pretty much rubble. In an ironic twist, and keeping in mind that pretty much all of Ukraine speaks Russian, Mariupol was one of the most Pro-Russian cities in the country. They have since changed their opinion.
It is estimated that Russia has suffered 30,000 casualties - that’s combined dead, wounded, captured - since the war started. They are trying to outnumber the Ukrainian soldiers 5:1 on the ground for the upcoming fight in the Donbas region which is expected to start possibly by the end of the week. Two problems: the defenders are very well dug-in, and it’s mud season!
The train station where more than 50 people were killed in shelling? Expert investigators say evidence such as blast patterns and scorching, along with interviews with witnesses have led them to conclude that cluster bomb munitions were used. These were outlawed by treaty in 2008, among the countries that did not sign the ban are Russia, Ukraine, and the good ol’ USA.
Computer security researchers have been keeping a close eye on Ukraine’s remaining public utility infrastructure. Recently Russia tried to launch an attack that would take down Ukraine’s power grid, but the defenders had detected and neutralized it and nothing happened. And we now know that there is a new player in the APT game (Advanced Persistent Threats): Sandworm. The attack was set to go off on 8 April and contained the usual collection of malware and disk wipers. This is the third time Sandworm has tried to knock out Ukraine’s grid, and the third time they’ve failed.
Let's talk about tanks. Russia has lost A LOT of tanks in this war. Why? A very simple answer: advances in anti-tank man-portable rockets. It started with the LAW: the Light Anti-Tank Rocket. It would do a number on a tank real bad. And you would reach a point of diminishing return in increasing the thickness of the armor, which would strain the engine and slow down its mobility, making it vulnerable to other tanks. An answer was found in what's known as Reactive Armor. Those are the rectangular thick pads you see in the photos of Russian tanks. Those are actually explosive charges. The warhead of the rocket hits the reactive armor, the armor explodes, blows up the rocket, and doesn't really hurt the tank! EXCEPT we now have the second generation of LAWs! The new generation is smarter. The Javelin missiles that the USA is providing are especially nasty: they shoot towards the tank, and then when they're close - they pop up and drop down on the top of the tank vertically, where there is no ablative armor, and blow the hell out of it. The British NLAW, New LAW, uses a different approach. It flies above the tank and detonates above the tank, where the armor is thinnest. And the USA and UK are sending lots and lots to Ukraine, making the Russian tankers very unhappy and dead. These are also very effective against armored personnel carriers, AKA armored fighting vehicles (pretty much synonyms) which are armored against infantry rifles and such, but will not stand up against a tank's main gun nor against sustained heavy machine gun fire. And second-generation LAWs? Forget it. Tissue paper. Ukraine says they've destroyed 680 tanks, a military analysis thinktank puts the number nearer 460 with another 2,000 armored vehicles lost. It was estimated that Russia started the war with some 2,700 main battle tanks, and as I wrote before, their ready reserves are extremely unreliable for replacements and repairs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61021388
The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of their Black Sea fleet, was struck by two Neptune anti-ship missile and caused an ammunition explosion and the crew to abandon her. The ship was attacked in the Odessa region, which is the SW Black Sea port where Mariupol is the NE port with Crimea between them. Russian news admitted the evacuation but are saying it is due to a fire caused by exploding ammunition. Damage like this will probably take it out of service for some time. The Lithuanian defense minister says the ship has sunk, Russia denies. The Moskva is the ship from the start of the war that ordered the Snake Island garrison to surrender and was told to “Go to hell!” It was built in Ukraine in the 1980s and would be lovely if it was sunk by them.
It is now reported by the BBC that Russian news sources are saying the Moskva sank while being towed to a port in Crimea! Interestingly, a Pentagon official earlier today said that the ship was moving under its own power. Ukraine says this is the fourth ship they have attacked. I don't know if the Neptunes were used in the other attacks, this particular cruise missile has a range of 175 miles, so ships can't park too close to shore if they want to stay safe.
Thirty Ukrainians have been repatriated through a prisoner swap, including a small number of civilians which included a woman. This is apparently the fourth such prisoner swap.
From a BBC article, Russia claims two Ukrainian helicopters attacked a residential neighborhood. Several injured, no dead, homes destroyed. Ukraine denies, Russia will retaliate if these attacks continue, blah blah blah. I’m seriously thinking this is Russia conducting false flag attacks against its own people to give itself a fig leaf’s cover.
Russia has started jamming GPS signals in Ukraine. They have their own system called Glonass, seems only fair to return the favor. GPS - and we're talking the American version here - is a system of 24 satellites above the earth in varying orbits. Receivers calculate the differences in signals from different orbits to determine where that receiver is. Theoretically at least four satellites are above any place on the planet at any time. Because of the height of the orbits, the signals are very weak and easy to jam. Prior to Bill Clinton's presidency in the '90s, the signals were exclusive to military use, he signed a presidential order to degrade part of the signal's accuracy and declassify it for civilian use. It's more than accurate enough for civilian navigation, while the more classified and higher precision signal is still in use by the military.
An excellent article via CNN talked about the value of trucks to the Russian military and the problem it is causing them. The basic issue is that all supplies move via trucks: ammunition, food, medical supplies, even men. Trucks have an effective range of about 90 miles from their depot, and Russia has invaded a country the size of the state of Texas. That means having to build a lot of forward bases. Additionally, Russia doesn't believe in palletizing supplies and using forklifts, so instead of one forklift and one pallet of 16 tank or artillery shells, you've got two men carrying one shell, making for a much slower loading process. Slower loading process means truck is sitting in one places for a lot longer. Sitting truck = sitting duck. It takes about six months to build a new truck, meanwhile other trucks are being destroyed. And we know about the state of the Russian ready reserve, i.e. they're not remotely ready to be put into service. The Russians have an answer to their truck shortage: steal them from civilians. The problem is that civi trucks are not rated for military use: they don't have the carrying capacity or the off-road suspensions, nor are they modified to carry the special configurations of gear that the trucks sometimes have to do. They just don't work. The article went on to talk about Russia's logistics chain, including their resupply and trucks and their maintenance, being in the hands of their conscripts. Their conscripts are in for a one year term. Then they're gone. That's not enough time to learn the job, much less to do it well. In the American military, the truck fleet is in the hands of non-commissioned officers who have a career path and lots of training and advancement opportunities and good pay.
Brittney Griner is a long-term story that needs reporting. She is a WNBA star and normally plays for the Phoenix Mercury. In her career she has won a college championship, WNBA championship, Euroleague title, and an Olympic gold medal. Few men have a comparable record. But because women's sports pay so poorly, during the WNBA off-season she plays in leagues in China, and in Russia. She makes a lot more money in those two countries than she does in the USA, she's treated much more like the sports hero that she is over there. As she was leaving Russia in February, airport security "found" cannabis in her luggage. This is a very common tactic used by Russia when something bad is going on or about to happen: grab a citizen of one of the countries involved, lay up some charges, throw them in prison. You now have a convenient negotiating lever. There's simply no way to know if the drugs are legitimately hers or were planted by security services as a reason to imprison her, but in prison she has sat for two months now. And if convicted on charges, she could sit for a decide. She gets visits from her legal counsel and U.S. State Department officials to check on her well-being, otherwise almost nothing is known about her case.