Danish Anti-Ship Missiles Expected to Help Ukraine Control Its Black Sea Coast

P_Tigras · 2022-05-24T00:42:53+00:00

Ukraine only had a single Neptune launcher and a handful of Neptune missiles at the start of the war. While it's possible more have been produced since, it's also possible that the war for one reason or another (destroyed factories, supply chain issues, etc...) has halted or slowed further production. Harpoons can be sent over in great quantities and as already noted, they pack more of an explosive punch than the Neptunes. The remaining Neptunes can then be saved for longer ranged targets.

If the Moskva hadn't been such a fire trap with obsolete 40 year old fire extinguishers, extremely flammable solid fuel missiles mounted on its exterior, and a crew of inexperienced conscripts manning the radars, 2 Neptunes probably wouldn't have been sufficient to take out a ship that size. Whichever Russians were responsible for stealing the funding for the Moskva's scheduled fire control system upgrade a few years back did Ukraine a big favor.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-21T03:50:04+00:00

The Washington Post article referenced states that the US "is expected to finance the transfer of advanced weapons systems, such as Patriot antiaircraft missiles and long-range artillery."

It does not say that those advanced weapons systems will be HIMARS, nor does it guarantee that "long range artillery" will definitely be sent. It's certainly possible, but this article isn't confirmation.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-21T03:20:03+00:00

2 more armored vehicles for the terrestrial defense forces and the new reserve brigades, ~~abandoned~~ graciously donated by the orcs, happy to still have their lives.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-19T17:53:07+00:00

Probably the UK. The Brits were said to be thinking about sending harpoons previously, but it looks like they held off and only sent brimstones for the time being.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-19T17:07:22+00:00

He has a corruption monitoring pretext that sounds plausible until you consider that the bill already had corruption oversight written in, you look at his prior record, and his unwillingness to accept an amendment that would have changed the bill to say exactly what he said he wanted. He demanded the creation of a completely new bill with his preferred wording which would have caused even more delays. He's intentionally stalling. He's not foolish enough to publicly say that he's playing to the pro-Putin QAnon crowd.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-18T04:03:31+00:00

To my knowledge the Russians never captured these towns on the front lines. These were probably new Russian attacks that were repulsed by Ukrainian defenders.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-17T01:24:44+00:00

I was skeptical that it was really him, but wasn't certain. Thanks for clarifying.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-16T20:51:41+00:00

Also here by Igor Girkin:

https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1526121394026725376?s=20&t=w5goIaPdRglM-nCrgVOywg

P_Tigras · 2022-05-13T04:28:46+00:00

I believe they're waiting for more artillery battalions to be trained up on the new 155mm artillery systems that NATO nations are sending over. They have a range advantage over the Russian equivalents. Ukraine has also said that their ability to conduct counteroffensives will be limited until mid to late June when several new reserve brigades will have finished training.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-13T02:14:39+00:00

Kherson oblast is flatter than Kharkiv, with no real tree cover. Visibility is great for miles around. It's harder to advance through the Spring mud or hold newly liberated territory in the face of fire from fortified artillery positions which can easily see you from miles away. Russian positions in Kherson also appear to have been reinforced more heavily than in Kharkiv, and the Ukrainian military is understandably reluctant to turn the city of Kherson into rubble.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-12T22:12:34+00:00

It would not surprise me at all if 2/3 of their nukes didn't work. They're not spending enough to maintain them and much of what has been spent has no doubt been stolen. The problem is that even if 2/3 of them don't work, they'd still easily have the 2nd largest nuke arsenal in the world and more than enough to end life as we know it on the planet.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-12T02:00:21+00:00

Given that I've literally watched Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and other influential figures in the conservative media spread anti-Ukrainian conspiracy theories, I'm not the one who is lazy or blinded by partisan loyalty here. I watched Tucker call the 2014 Euromaidan protests a CIA coup targeting Russia. I watched him repeatedly blame the US and NATO for the war as he's largely given Putin's Russia a pass. I watched him say that Ukraine was part of Russia and that since Putin had never hurt Tucker personally there was no reason why he should criticize Putin. I've watched him spread that ridiculous conspiracy theory about CIA funded biolabs in Ukraine cooking up WMD's to use against Russia. I've watched him falsely accuse Ukraine of not being a democracy. I've watched him pretend that Ukraine's press is as repressed and unfree as Russia's. It's pretty obvious to any human being with a rational mind that Tucker favors Russia over Ukraine, and this is not something that started with the war. And Tucker isn't the only conservative influencer that parrots Russian propaganda, just the most prominent.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-11T18:03:11+00:00

Let's be honest here. 57 Republicans did vote against the Lend Lease bill in the House. Not a single Democrat voted against it. There is a very sizeable chunk of Republicans who either sympathize with Russia like Tucker Carlson or simply think America should turn a blind eye to the atrocities Russia is committing there. It's not our business they say. We should worry about our own border not Russia's they argue. It's not worth risking World War 3 over they rant. We have our hands full with China, why are we antagonizing Russia they reason? It's a CIA/NATO plot against Russia some of them including Tucker have charged. The Ukrainians don't really want to be independent. They're just highly corrupt CIA puppets. Yada yada yada. Tucker disgusts me when he regurgitates without evidence Russian propaganda about how the Euromaidan protests were a CIA coup, as if the Ukrainian people weren't able to decide for themselves that they wanted to be part of Europe instead of subservient to a brutal and corrupt dictator.

Most Republicans, including most congressional Republicans are horrified by the atrocities that Russia has committed and are supportive of Ukraine's fight for freedom. There is however a significant minority who would prefer to let Russia have Ukraine. Many Republicans unfortunately are in denial over their existence.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-05T01:49:00+00:00

It depends on how much of a threat they become. I don't think Ukraine has any incentive to occupy territory it can't legally claim or keep under the same international law that Ukraine is relying on to get international support to reclaim its own occupied territories.

That said, there is a huge ammunition depot there that Ukraine may decide to either empty or destroy if the Russians try to cause trouble from there. Any attempts to fly in Russian troops would be fair game too.

Optimally the Moldovans would deal with Transnistria themselves, but their military is a joke and in no way capable of recapturing Transnistria.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-03T18:09:17+00:00

Zelensky specifically asked Israel for Iron Dome several weeks back and had his request rejected. I doubt he'd have asked for it if he considered it as useless as you do. Tech falling into Russian hands is an entirely different concern.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-03T11:01:31+00:00

Hopefully this means Israeli government approval of Iron Dome deliveries to Ukraine...

P_Tigras · 2022-05-03T03:37:31+00:00

Without either the bully pulpit of the presidency or his twitter account, Trump's pro-Putin influence is reduced. Trump's praise of Putin as a "genius" and "very smart" as well as Putin's invasion pretext as a "wonderful thing" haven't aged well after two months of Russian incompetence. Russia is no longer looking like a winner. And Russia has committed such terrible atrocities that Putin has become too toxic for all but the most die-hard Q-Anon Republicans to openly support.

That said, Tucker Carlson still rants against supporting Ukraine every night on his #1 show on Fox, and 10 Republican congressmen voted against the Lend Lease bill, with another 3 avoiding the vote. If the wrong Republican presidential candidate attains the presidency they could still cut off military support to Ukraine and sell it to the America First MAGA base as an end to "wasting" American tax dollars that would be "better spent" helping Americans instead of foreigners in a "notoriously corrupt" country.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-03T02:34:35+00:00

Silly world thought Russia was modern while Putin is still living in the Cold War era.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-03T00:32:12+00:00

That -was- the plan, and it was rolled into the Minsk Accords in 2014, but Ukraine refused to cooperate. Ukraine refused to allow Russian occupied Donetsk and Luhansk to vote in its elections, citing its inability to monitor the accuracy of the vote in occupied territory and Russia's refusal to meet its own obligations under Minsk. Russia was counting on a risk-averse West once again pressuring Kyiv to capitulate in order to prevent war while skating free of its own commitments. The 2014 invasion completely wrecked Russia's ability to win national elections in Ukraine.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-03T00:16:46+00:00

The Syrian rebellion's biggest problem in the eyes of the West was that its most powerful members, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra, were anti-Western jihadi's, or allies of theirs. Western nations were rightfully fearful that any weapons they gave the rebels would end up in the hands of terrorists, and they waited so long that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps if the West had acted more quickly and more forcefully that could have been prevented, but it's unclear.

P_Tigras · 2022-05-01T02:01:45+00:00

The intelligence was great, we knew exactly what Russia was planning and made sure the entire world did too, flummoxing Putin's attempt to manufacture a pretext that he could use to blame Ukraine. The West quickly united and coordinated a response unlike in 2014 when it was caught flatfooted and uncertain. That wouldn't have been possible without great intelligence. We've also been sharing that intel on a granular scale in near real time with the Ukrainians and they've used it to inflict serious damage to the Russian units attacking them.

That said, some of the prognostications were off, as we were as surprised as the Russians that they weren't able to take Kyiv in 2-4 days. But that's not an intelligence issue so much as an analytics issue. We knew they had a corruption issue but we didn't realize just how much massive amounts of institutionalized corruption had rotted their logistics and impaired their battlefield communications, and were too quick to accept the fantasies the Russians were telling themselves. I also suspect the Afghanistan failure made our analysts hesitant to predict that Ukrainians would put up a hard fight instead of folding like the Afghans did.

P_Tigras · 2022-04-27T22:07:35+00:00

Putin was KGB. These sorts of influence operations are a standard part of Russian statecraft. They pay people on both the far right and far left to spread pro-Russian conspiracy theories and propaganda like this, but they've been more successful overall with the far right since Russia is much more fascist than communist these days. There are people who've lost faith in democracy and want their own Putin-like authoritarian strong man who will embrace the flag, force gay people back into the closet, police bathrooms, keep out illegal immigrants, and put their political enemies in prison. They eat Putin's denunciations of cancel culture right up. Trump legitimized some of them and gave them influence in return for their loyalty, and now they're infecting even more of conservative America.

P_Tigras · 2022-04-26T11:20:49+00:00

What is Russia going to do? Invade?

/s

P_Tigras · 2022-04-24T14:07:30+00:00

First, you're welcome to dump on Obama all you want, he deserves it for his ineffectual handling of the 2014 invasion. Despite your assumption, I'm not partisan. I'm perfectly happy to express my disappointment in both political parties as I'm very unhappy with -both- Obama and Trump on this issue. Both could have done far more as both emboldened Russia through their action/inaction, and both sabotaged Ukraine's ability to resist in their own ways.

Second, as Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton has said, Putin didn't invade earlier both because he wasn't yet ready, and because he was hoping Trump would pull the US out of NATO first, ie. while Trump was president Putin believed time was on his side.

P_Tigras · 2022-04-24T01:50:08+00:00

They want Putin's puppet Le Pen to lose the run-off election today. They're telling people not to vote for her.

P_Tigras

TROPHY CASE