view the rest of the comments
World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
Well, I don't know what kind of counter he's aiming for. There are basically two that I can think of:
Long-range SAMs with sufficient range (and maybe mobility) to strike an aircraft launching glide bombs without being placed at risk. Ukraine's has had some old long-range Warsaw Pact SAMs, but I don't think that we've got more stores or production capacity. There are Patriots, but those are the only anti-ballistic-missile counter Ukraine presently has; using them as a counter for aircraft will cut into that. I suggested earlier that the SAMP/T systems that France sent, firing Aster missiles -- which theoretically have an ABM capability, but at least earlier in the conflict, apparently weren't intercepting them -- might work, if the range is long enough.
Aircraft armed with long-range air-to-air missiles.
Russia's newest glide bombs, according to this article, probably reach about 90 km.
To use it to directly support the front, that's about how close they're going to have to get. Maybe closer if they want to strike behind the front.
The US has the AIM-120. The latest version reaches 160–180 km according to WP. We have other long-range air-to-air missiles in development, but not in production today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Range_Engagement_Weapon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-260_JATM
Europe has the Meteor:
A Ukrainian aircraft firing those will need to do so at high altitude to leverage high range, use the aircraft's fuel rather than the missile's. That height will make it visible to Russian air defense, and the aircraft has to avoid getting hit by Russian SAMs.
The longest-range SAM that I'm aware of that Russia has is an S-400 variant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system
That can reach out 400 km with the right missile according to WP.
Now, there are a number of ways one might measure range (from what height? Are these "minimum maximum" ranges or the actual limit? Is this a no-escape range or the furthest the missile can travel? What altitude can it reach at that point?) So I can't say "this is the range that Ukraine's going to need" exactly. But if Russia can legitimately reach out about twice as far as any air-to-air missile, it seems to me that that's going to be a problem for air-to-air missile use unless countermeasures or stealth or similar can prevent Russia from making use of SAMs.
Ukraine has been hitting S-400s with ATACMS, so those are, in turn, under threat.
EDIT: Another twist is that Russia also has long-range air-to-air missiles, and any Ukrainian aircraft trying to hit a Russian attack aircraft with an air-to-air missile is going to have to worry about those coming back the other direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-37_(missile)
Given that the longest-range variant there can reach out 400 km, that's a pretty big buffer for Russia to work with. I believe that those missiles are intended more for hitting "large" aircraft, like bombers or the like, so a fighter might be a little better off, but I'd assume that something like an F-16 remains vulnerable.
In a "Russia versus NATO" scenario, there are stealthy F-35s that that missile probably won't do much good against. But Ukraine's not using stealthy aircraft.
Long range atacms and maybe a few cruise missiles that can take out an airfield. In no way does Russia have any air defense put back that far behind the lines.
I'm just surprised Ukraine has not resorted to attacks from an ocean faring ship up north yet.
I don't think that there's any realistic chance that Ukraine can make use of ships in the Black Sea. Russia built their military to contest the US in the Pacific -- they've got a lot of long-range anti-ship weapons. That surplus capacity is why they've been blowing anti-ship missiles on land attack. I'd be pretty confident that Russia can keep a Ukrainian warship from surviving in the Black Sea. Where Ukraine's pulling off naval attacks, it's using either small, very-low-profile boats or even-lower-profile, mostly-submerged USVs. Russia apparently doesn't have the sensor capability to reliably pick those up (and I imagine that Ukrainian strikes on radars probably also complicate that).
I have wondered about maybe Ukraine using larger UUVs that surface to launch a weapon. Such a UUV would have to be something that could be transported on a trailer, so there are some size limitations. But it might permit for a more-capable platform than the small USVs that are currently being used.
I don't know what kind of anti-submarine-warfare tools Russia has available in the Black Sea, but if they aren't able to detect the existing USVs, I would assume that they aren't going to be doing better with UUVs.
EDIT: There's a reference to a Ukrainian UUV project in progress here; it says that Russia is improving their ability to detect the existing Ukrainian USVs, so UUVs are becoming more important.
I was more referring to using a containership in the northern ice sea to launch a single wave of UAVs to destroy the Russian strategic bombers parked north of st petersburg. You know a one time strike option.
Or use clandestine means to build Magura type drone boat in the Caspian sea and launch against a vessel. You know, even more asymmetric. Like what they do in Syria and Africa.
The Baltic Sea?
Arctic ocean. I did a literal translation from Dutch.. which made sense but was wrong. Sry
Ah, okay, gotcha.
So, there are a couple issues:
I'd guess that Russia is able to prevent a surface ship from approaching Russia in any ocean unless someone can fight an offensive air and naval war to get control of that ocean.
I'm guessing (you said "container ship") that the idea might be to use a concealed civilian vessel that then unloads some kind of surprise attack. While disguised military ships have been used to conduct armed warfare before, the last time I can think of an example was British Q-ships in World War I; I'm not sure that this is still legal.
Turkey has closed the Turkish Straits to warships due to the conflict, so technically no warships are supposed to pass, from either side. I'm I believe that it violates the convention governing this to either tell Turkey that the warship isn't actually a warship or if Turkey knows but preferentially lets warships through. That being said, I guess theoretically Ukraine could assemble such an attack using a ship somewhere far away from Ukraine.
My guess is that if Ukraine had a lot of long-range cruise missiles, they'd probably be using them in their own theater of operations, as they're pretty short on them.
I don't think that Russia is using strategic bombers for the glide bombing attacks, so whatever the benefits of hitting them, I'm not sure that it would be a counter to the glide bomb attacks. kagis Yeah, this has the (much more numerous) Su-34 being used:
Strategic bombers are used to launch the hypersonics at Ukraine. They are rarer so a high value target. If they can cut of kinzal at its roots.
That's true, though IIRC there are two planes, and I think that one of them -- and the more-numerous one -- is a variant of some multirole fighter.
kagis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal
Looks like two confirmed, another possible, another eventually (though I can't imagine using the rare, intended-for-another-purposes Su-57 if they could use the others).