Image is of President Vladimir Putin, with his cook Prigozhin, though he is more famous for other things.
I'm assuming we all know what a "Russia" and a "Putin" is, so I'm skipping the background section.
On March 15th, Putin handily won the presidential election. This is perhaps one of the least surprising things to happen in the last couple years, and all claims and debates about electoral corruption are missing the point (in this particular election at least). The reason why Putin won is not fascist brainwashing or Putin having a high Persuasion/Intimidation DC, and it's not even really about the laws that make opposing the Ukraine War illegal. Wages are up significantly, unemployment is at record lows (for the post-USSR period, of course), as is poverty, and the ruble is about as stable as it could be given what the West has tried to do to it. The government has been forced to massively intervene in the economy to keep things afloat, buying up properties that have been ditched by foreign and domestic billionaires, though obviously Russia's wealthy are still plenty powerful. Inflation is up, but wages are comfortably outpacing it. And the Communist Party remains a relic of a bygone era, disconnected from the young people who might hypothetically propel a revolution.
Russia is still in the transition from switching to a Western-oriented export economy to an Eastern-oriented one. Nonetheless, Russia is now China's single largest oil supplier (unseating Saudi Arabia), delivering half of all their oil to China, and trade between the two countries has massively increased. Where Western brands have retreated from Russia (and not many actually have), more Russia-friendly corporations, and Russian businesses themselves, have filled the gaps.
By going through the news, I've seen a lot of economies that are not doing well at all. Most countries seem to be in that category. Either they have general growth but a deeply struggling populace, or the government is trying to keep the population afloat but running up huge debts in the process, or the government is failing on both counts. Russia is one of the few countries on the planet that I can confidently state is actually doing quite well objectively, which means it's doing extremely well relatively. Considering the Western economists regularly delivering portents of doom in early 2022, and salivating over how they were going to divide the country following the inevitable economic collapse, this is a hilarious state of affairs.
In the long term, their predictions may come true. It is entirely possible that a post-war Russia will slump, returning to neoliberal policies and continuing their nonsensical allergy to budget deficits. Russia might not be a mere gas station, but a substantial amount of the economy is made up of fossil fuel exports, which might be troublesome in a greener future, especially as China, their main oil market, is one of the few countries on the planet that seems serious about renewable/nuclear energy. And the limited labour force means that long-term growth is inherently limited without some creative measures, even with the potential influx of whatever remains of the population and territory that Russia seizes in Ukraine. Perhaps it is in this crucible of disillusionment and hardship, after seeing that good things are indeed possible if the government wishes them to be so, that a socialist Russia could rise again. But we aren't there yet, and the growth continues for now.
Apologies for the lack of updates (again!), I've been going through book titles again for the reading list (I've probably got a thousand or more to get through) and also trying to touch grass more. I'm not very good at balancing things out, I tend to do the hyperfocus-on-one-thing-until-it's-done approach.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Russia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/633badee-9874-42e7-ba43-b075523e84c2.webp)
I wanted to write a short primer on missile terminology at the start of the week, but my phone deleted most of it so I ran out of energy. Here it is again.
#Aerodynamics: Hypersonic: Technically a buzzword, but is regarded at Mach 5 (aka 5x the speed of sound). In US Military terms, this refers to a weapon that can perform maneuvers at this speed above. Ballistic missiles travel at above hypersonic speeds or above by virtue of all their other properties, but don't fill the US military definition as they don't do maneuvers in response to incoming fire. Even the original V2 approached hypersonic speeds. This speed makes the weapon difficult to intercept, as there's less time to intercept and any change in direction is "larger" for the purposes of interception. However, most cruise missiles and anti-tank missiles are not hypersonic, and are even subsonic. Hypersonic velocities introduce some aerodynamic and physical/mechanical complications that slowly increase depending on the local air pressure and multiple of the speed of sound. As a counter-example, a Mach 10 projectile 60 km above the Earth's surface will not produce the same plasma envelope or heat as the same profile projectile 2 km above the Earth's surface. Be wary when seeing this term in the media, it sometimes refers to ballistic missiles, which is nothing special unless they can course correct.
Supersonic: An actual technical term that means above the speed of sound in a given context. You know this. At sea level (and for many military applications), this is roughly 340 meters a second (1200 kmph or 760 mph). There are a bunch of aerodynamic qualities that change around this speed. I say around as air flowing past a bit sticking out (say, a wing, or radio antenna etc) will cause air to flow faster than the speed of sound, creating lateral forces that affect the vehicle (vehicle: plane, missile, bullet etc). Those lateral forces mean a vehicle will want to be solidly above or below the supersonic threshold. The lower the air pressure (usually, the further up) reduces the speed of sound, but also reduces the supersonic effects (to zero, as you slowly go up into the stratosphere). For long ranged air-lining, a higher altitude where your jet engines still run is better, but for other purposes it varies a lot.
Subsonic: Slower than the speed of sound. You are this, probably.
Missile Types: Ballistic Missile: A vehicle (plane, missile, or bullet) that follows approximately a ballistic trajectory. Usually, such a vehicle will expend all of its fuel on the way up (at most), and rely on orbital mechanics to maintain its speed on the way down. Longer ranged ones will avoid the Earth's atmosphere for a lot of the journey. This means that such a vehicle will be very speed<->weight/fuel efficient. If it isn't striking a moving target, it also needs the least amount of redirection by weight. Its main disadvantages are that its very easy to detect by RADAR, since it by definition goes over the horizon very far away, and that it can get difficult to course correct for many reasons. As the air pressure goes down due to altitude, your aerodynamic surfaces matter less. As the pressure and speed increase, both heat and RADAR are less effective on the way down. Nonetheless, they are very hard to shoot down. Famous examples: V2 Rocket, Iskander, Kinzhal, and ATACMs. They're also cheaper per range/weight.
Cruise Missile: A missile that follows the curvature of the Earth (instead of ballistic trajectory), usually powered by a jet Engine and are usually subsonic. Compared to Ballistic missiles, they're easier to guide and harder to detect by RADAR. However, once they are detected, they are easier to shoot down. They can even be chased and engaged with fighter aircraft. Some of them have a lower powered RADAR that lets them follow terrain up and down, making their visibility extremely low when going cross-country. Cruise missiles have an ascending, descending, and a cruise trajectory, and generally behave like a plane (indeed, the original Kamikazes planes were called early cruise missiles, but the V1 is closer to what we'd call a cruise missile). They have similar vulnerabilities to planes. Various methods of making them harder to shoot down, coating them in RADAR absorbing paint, making them faster during one stage (often descent, for things like the Zircon), RADAR following terrain, Jinking maneuvers on descent, hardened noses etc. Famous examples include the V1 Buzz-bomb, Tomahawk Missile, Zircon... Anti-ship missiles are often a variation of this, flying lower and with less range but otherwise performing the same function.
Missile: Much talk of missiles, traditionally it means something that isn't powered in flight (e.g. an arrow, rock, bullet etc), but nowadays means an unmanned powered flight weapon (e.g. a cruise missile, ballistic missile etc). Nonetheless, it is always separated from the operator and firing mechanism, as is tradition.
Anti-Aircraft Missile: The Ballistic and Cruise Missiles usually go to destroy battlefield assets of one sort or another. AA missiles specifically destroy missiles and aircraft. They tend to be the fastest rocket powered missiles for their size. Things like the Patriot or the S-500 are AA missiles, and are capable of catching up to and destroying other missiles even if the other missile has passed the launch point. The tend to fly in a straight-ish line, always heading for the predicted trajectory of the target.
Drone: Often powered by an electric motor, subsonic, and intended to loiter in the battle space until needed, as opposed to launched for mission. Blurry term.
Motors:
Rockets: Rockets are high power per weight, high power per time, and extremely cheap. Their disadvantages are running time and they are less able to be controlled (there are fuel rockets, but that's generally outside the scope of a military context). They are mostly used on Ballistic and AA missiles, and the final portion of some cruise missiles. The smallest missiles (MANPADS, MANPAT?, etc) also tend to use rockets for their simplicity, tolerance to size, and cheapness.
Jet Engines: Jet Engines offer very high power to weight ratio, weight to range, and medium efficiency. They're usually found on cruise missiles and aircraft. Some cruise missiles final stage may seem like they attain rocket-like velocities, but in-fact use scramjets to attain this velocity. They tend to be very high cost for all dimensions (range, efficiency, volume etc), but fulfill a niche in between traditional combustion engines and rockets.
Piston Engines: Outside the scope of missiles and aircraft nowadays, though they used to be used in aircraft. They are cheap, have high tolerances and fuel efficiency, and can adjust their power for a purpose very well. They tend to be quite heavy for their power output though. Poor torque at low RPS compared to all other engine types. We don't see these on missiles or aircraft atm and I don't see it except in some extremely niche cases.
Electric Motors: These tend to be somewhere around Jets and Pistons, though they tend to have quite high weights to volume and power. They offer very high torque at low RPS compared to jets and lots of power variability, and much lower mechanical complexity compared to equivalent Jet and Piston designs. As the line between missile and drone gets blurred, I imagine we'll see this blurred. However, for the time being, if something is electrically powered and seems like a missile, it is a "drone".
Motor vs Engine: Motor provides motive force generally, engine provides motive force with internal combustion. Colloquially, these are pretty interchangeable. However, if you need to... Steam Engine, Jet Engine, Electric Motor, Pressure Motor. Usually, this is rotary. Rocket engines, despite being a combustion system, often get called motors.
Guidance systems:
RADAR: The standard method of tracking aerial targets and sea targets. Metal reflects Radio very well compared to air or water, or even soil, so this can be tracked very easily. Sometimes, especially for smaller projectiles (e.g. AA guns), the RADAR is on the ground and the projectiles pull into the reflection from the target until they are close enough. Missiles can also track into such a reflection; Semi-homing RADAR (Fox-1). For larger systems, a RADAR array can be mounted on the projectile (active homing RADAR, Fox 3). This is used in civil and military aviation constantly, but can also be used for reversing your car, speed detectors etc. Can be jammed, but not as easily as you'd think.
Infrared/thermal/heat-seeking: (Fox 2) The main method other than RADAR for tracking aerial targets. Aircraft tend to run hot. Thus, an infrared camera can track a projectile into a target for much cheaper. Most military aircraft carry flares to guide heat-seeking projectiles away, to varying degrees of success. This also tends to be pretty short ranged; infra-red gets soaked up by the atmosphere pretty quickly. Also, for faster missiles, the nose cone gets hotter as the velocity increases, which reduces the ability of thermal optics to see any target.
Manual or external guidance: Receiving data from somewhere else to guide the missile. Wire-guiding on anti-tank weapons is a classic method of this, however the modern Dong Feng uses transmissions from an AWACS to guide to target. These tend to vary quite wildly and their counter-systems also.
Aerodynamic Control: Uses fins and wings to control the direction of movement. Only applicable for low altitude missiles, and less applicable for supersonic vehicles (but not inapplicable, you just have to design around it)
Gyroscopic Control: Stabilisation control that allows you to adjust heading based on previous velocity. Used in conjuction with other controls.
Vectored Thrust Control: Uses thrust from the Motors to control the direction of movement. The only valid method of control when outside the atmosphere.
I ran out of characters :( Assume this is formatted better.
And hypersonic glide vehicles weren't even mentioned in all those characters lol.
This stuff is very complicated.
I'm sorry!
No don't worry about it lol. There is just a lot of misleading information on this subject. Less than a week ago Russian media made a big deal about the Houthis having a newly tested "hypersonic missile", and it turned out that the missile in question was an anti ship ballistic missile publicly unveiled by the Houthis during a military parade last year. And Iran unveiled the same missile a few years ago. So not a new weapon.
Yeah, this is partly a response to that and 7trillion saying someone should make a primer. But also being riotously drunk and feeling like I can type things.
For the sake of completeness:
Glide Vehicle: A vehicle that glides? It doesn't have any (or much) thrust, but will use aerodynamic surfaces to improve range. One of the advantages of JDAMs is that they transform previously dumb gravity bombs into guided glide munitions. Not amazing gliders, mind, but enough that they practically can extend the range of bombs, in addition to their ability to guide bombs onto targets fairly precisely. Almost every aircraft becomes a glide vehicle on engine failure, favouring subsonic fixed wing aircraft. In the context of missiles, they're typically harder to detect on the grounds of not leaving a great smoke trail or generating heat.
Hypersonic Glide Vehicle: A vehicle that glides... Hypersonicly. The aerodynamic challenges here are numerous, but if resolved allows for a lot of warhead space and substantially increasing the threat radius of a missile in flight. I assume speed will be built up high in the atmosphere, and then that speed is bled off for range as the vehicle ducks back down under RADAR, hopefully leaving enough to speed to evade air defence. More applicable to ballistic missiles. Technically, you could have a hypersonic glide cruise missile, but unless fuel is your major concern you may as well use a scramjet (which is what the Russians have done, I believe) which you're already using to build up speed. You will also be a small hot thing on thermals, as being hypersonic will generate a lot of heat on your face. Hypersonic Glide also necessitates control surfaces to operate at hypersonic speeds, by definition, thus hypersonic glide vehicles can maneuver (bleeding off speed) at hypersonic speeds, making them a challenge to shoot down. A missile using aerodynamic controls at hypersonic speeds is necessarily a hypersonic glide vehicle.
Here are some example missiles:
Every time this is brought up on whig forums, someone will say "Oh, but hypersonic means that a plasma sheath will block its ability to detect its target and guide into a moving target". Sometimes people will say stuff that needs to be designed around as a way to say "you need to design around this", but a lot of the time on these forums they're saying to say "therefore the inferior Chinese/Russian brainpan cannot successfully make a missile that does this, they are lying, and we should stop talking about it". It can be designed around. It would not be hard, except in the standard way engineering is hard.
Well put. I would add/clarify:
Guidance systems
RADAR: (RAdio Detection And Ranging), Missiles and missile defense systems typically use microwaves, and they usually operate in the SHF (Super High Frequency, 3 to 30 GHz) band. Newer, more modern missiles make use of "millimeter wave" (aka EHF, Extremely High Frequency, 30 to 300 GHz). Each missile and detection radar operates at specific frequencies, determined by atmospheric permeability and propagation, as well as antenna and target sizes. The minimum size of object a radar can detect is a direct function of the wavelength, so the higher the frequency the smaller the object it can detect. However, higher frequencies also result in more noise and false detection, so they weren't usable until modern digital radars and software enabled better filtering. An interesting feature of radar transmitters and antennas is that each one emits slightly differently, as there are always manufacturing defects which change how the transmitter operates at various frequencies. This results in a sort of electromagnetic fingerprint, where modern Electronic Warfare (EW) sensors can detect these differences and identify specific units. As transmitters and antennas are expensive, a unit like a ship will use the same transmitter and antenna for most of its life, meaning you can determine exactly which ship is transmitting (whether radar or communication radios), which can be exploited for intelligence or targeting purposes.
Active Guidance: Actively guided missiles contain both the transmitter and receiver of their guidance radar onboard. Examples include all cruise missiles.
Passive Guidance: Contains only a receiver which detects emissions from the target in order to find it. The most common examples of this are IR seekers, but this category also includes Anti-Radiation Missiles (ARMs) fired at Electromagnetic (EM) transmission sources like air defense radars, as well as missiles with Home-On Jam capabilities.
Semi-Active Guidance: Semi-Active missiles contain only a receiver, but they home in on radiation transmitted by another friendly transmitter. Examples include the Standard Missile family (including the SM-6 for Ballistic Missile Defense). These can either home in on the radar reflecting off the target, or they can "ride" the beam, where the radar illuminator moves the beam to correct the missile's course.
There are also Inertial Guidance Systems, which are labeled as Gyroscopic Control in the above post, GPS Guidance Systems, and another whose proper name I forget but it basically takes pictures of the terrain below it and matches it to previously uploaded satellite reconnaissance photographs to maintain a course. All of these are used in long range cruise missiles like the Tomahawk.
Optical Terrain Recognition? I guess modern computers are small and cheap enough to put into missiles to be able to do this. Pattern matching algorithms have made leaps and bounds over the last decade. At some point, I expect AA missiles to be able to recognise friendly and enemy aircraft/drones and intelligently guide while not being distracted by flares/chaff/terrain.
The Tomahawk missile was equipped with that technology pretty much since the beginning IIRC. It only had a few snapshots onboard to compare to, and only did it at specific points in the preprogrammed flightpath.
Oh, very interesting early computing! The technical school I'm at has a late mechanical bomber sight on display that has a high detail map scrolling next to the bomb guy. Lots of little gears and stuff connected to the air speed of the plane.
RADAR and EW is super interesting!
Also, if you're a poorly funded military and you aren't using drones that use easily accessible commercially available GPS information, what are you doing?
In my 20-minutes into the future wargame that I'll never publish, I propose "Spectral Weapons", which sounds spooky but they're just small short ranged versions of ARMs that seek out things like millimeter RADAR (say, on active defence systems), wifi etc that the modern battlefield is awash with. Each turn your units can use abilities that give them EM pips (little blue markers that slot onto the miniature), and then the enemy can spend/use them to buff spectral weapons/equipment. Realistically, there's a minimum physical size for both an antenna and a rocket motor that would remain effective in the battlefield (soldiers, whatever else one might say about them, are not the most delicate fastidious people).
(maybe I'll publish it here on hexbear. It teaches basic logistics, terrain, operational level tactics, and explores some future stuff, near peer war etc)
Nice write up.