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The Fantasy Of Missile Defense In Ukraine
In October 2022 I mocked western media propaganda that was depicting Russia as unable to sustain the war:
Russia, Having 'Run Out Of Missiles', Launches Barrage On Ukraine
Back in March I had warned that Lies Do Not Win Wars. Here is another practical example.
After allegedly having 'run out of missiles' and, more importantly, patience, the leadership of the Russian Federation decided to de-electrify Ukrainian cities with a 'barrage of missile strikes'.
But first came the propaganda blubber: …
There followed 25 headlines by western media which claimed that Russia was running out of missiles.
More recently we see frequent claims by the Ukrainian government that it shot down 43 of the 32 drones Russia launched that day as well as 5 out of 3 supersonic missiles.
Laughable nonsense.
But slowly, slowly the Ukrainians and media have turned to describing stuff more near to, but not yet, reality:
Russia has fired 7,400 missiles, 3,700 Shahed drones in war so far, Kyiv says – Reuters
Russia has launched about 7,400 missiles and 3,700 Shahed attack drones at targets in Ukraine during its 22-month-old invasion, Kyiv said on Thursday, illustrating the vast scale of Moscow's aerial assaults.
Ukrainian air defences were able to shoot down 1,600 of the missiles and 2,900 of the drones, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments. "We are faced with an enormous aggressor, and we are fighting back," he said.
Shooting down drones, which are relatively slow and fly low, is not so difficult or expensive. One often only needs to have some machine guns in place on the path along which a drone is flying.
Shooting down missiles is something entirely different. Due to their flightpath and speed one needs expensive missile defense systems. The anti-missile missiles these systems fire come at a high price. One Patriot missile comes at about $2,000,000, more for newer ones. Routinely two are fired against any potential target.
If the Ukraine has really shot down 1,600 missiles, which I very much doubt, one can easily calculate the enormous costs of such an endeavor
There are reasons why Patriot missiles are only produced in the hundreds per year, not in the thousands.
No country in the world can sustain such an onslaught without running out of defenses or going bankrupt.
Several months ago a U.S. delivered Patriot system in Kiev came under attack. Set to automatic mode it fired (video) 32 missiles for no observable hits on the imaginary targets. Scott Ritter has said that the U.S. Marines are not allowed to use the automatic mode of their Patriot systems because that is known to fail. But the Ukrainians were not trained to fully handle the manual mode.
And now they are telling us that they shot down 1,600 missiles?
How probable is that?
Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 23 2023 3:27 utc | 163
So I rarely engage with comments like this, but I will make an exception, with the usual reminder.
Yes, because you wouldn’t want to confront anyone who challenges your carefully crafted narrative.
The war has been going on for almost two years. Who has a better predictive track record over that time? There is plenty of a sample size to go with.
The Martyanov-Scott Ritter-Larry Johnson-Mercouris-Pepe Escobar-etc. crowd, or the Russian doomers?
War is messy and slow, and also unpredictable. That said, as I’ve stated before you haven’t demonstrated in any of your posts that you even remotely understand Russian strategy in Ukraine, or military strategy in general. It’s one thing to be a doom and gloomer, it’s another to be a knowledgeable doomer.
Germany in 1918 collapsed suddenly because it had no external support. This is not the case here.
That’s not the reason for Germany’s collapse but I’ll leave your historically inaccurate analogy alone for now. However, external support for Ukraine is drying up, if you haven’t noticed. There is one tranche left next week, and then….done. The earliest the next aid will come, if it does, will be the summer. By then, it will be too late.
Yes, the SMO is slow going for the digital age, and for your liking. But I suggest, if you are so critical of the operation, and Russian leadership, yet you are so patristic and loyal to Mother Russia, then you should volunteer your services to the Russian military. Of course, that’s conditional on if they would accept you, and if you would join, Brave Sir Shadowbanned. No, I think you’d rather backpedal from the fight while hurtling insults, it fits you perfectly.
Posted by: James M. | Dec 23 2023 7:17 utc | 179
Who’s the one hurling insults here ? You. Shadowbanned is civil and does not engage in vulgar language. All the points he makes are perfectly valid.
The question is about track record. And the fact is that the Martyanov et al crowd have been quite adept at making wild-eyed predictions from the start, which have never quite fully materialized. Who can forget Ritter or McGregor claiming confidently in March 2022 that the Ukrainian army was done and on the verge of imminent collapse ? To say nothing of the Martyanov clown according to which the Russians are to the Ukrainians what Mike Tyson at his peak was to a 5-years old. Without ever bothering to explain why, in that case, the war has been dragging on for two years.
It’s quite grotesque, really. The worst are those bland reports from the MoD or Slavyangrad. “We are advancing..” “Repelling attacks…” “Confidently fighting…” Reading it you would expect to see 50-km advances in one day and Guderian’s ghost division blasting away the French and British across Nord-Pas-de-Calais in 1940. Instead, you look at the map and see that actually Russian forces have progressed 100 meters to the next tree line and are “on the outskirts” of bumf***ville (100 inhabitants).
When you mention those inconvenient facts, people react… Well they react like you actually, some sort of incoherent stream of thought. “The Russians are not interested in territory ! (oh year ? And why are the Slavyangrad reports so focussed on capturing strongholds and entering into villages ?)” “They just want to attrite the Ukies (oh. And I suppose they just enjoy losing men by the hundreds as well as all sorts of military stuff themselves)” And then, when the next Russian mini-offensive starts, they all throw it by the window. the same people who last week said “you know… War is messy and unpredictable… We don’t know the Russian general staff plans…” suddenly declare confidently that Avdeevka will fall next week, or by Christmas.
Avdeevka. What a circus. The offensive started beginning of October, and if you look at the map now progress has been miniscule. It’s already a failure. Assuming the Russians finally capture it, it will be only a heap of ruins and the Ukies will have had the time to build defensive lines just on the outskirts of it. It will be Bakhmut 2.0. The whole point of doing an operational encirclement and capturing a fortress is not to let your enemy build your next line of defense. And the russians have allowed the Ukrainians to do precisely that. Why ? Because they can’t do anything else and because Nato is quite a potent and competent adversary, like the Ukrainians themselves.
The only optimist blogger who I respect is simplicius/nightvision, who has considerably sobered and is now providing excellent stuff, albeit a little rose-tinged. But it’s still way better than the Martybots, or even b, who I think tends to downplay Russian difficulties and consider the war a done deal a bit too much.
Posted by: Micron | Dec 23 2023 9:05 utc | 184
What is interesting about the report of the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov: an analysis of the Military Chronicle Part 1
In the two parts of our analysis, we will examine the main points made in the report of the General Staff and explain what they mean.
What is it about?
The Chief of the General Staff does not often make voluminous public reports, however, in addition to general phrases, at the speech of General of the Army Valery Gerasimov on December 21, extremely interesting data were heard.
Judging by the slides presented by the General Staff, the Armed Forces of Ukraine really planned to carry out the summer offensive according to a plan that was obvious long before the start of hostilities. Moreover, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation anticipated the enemy’s plan and began the construction of defensive lines in the most threatened areas in advance, which is why they were criticized by domestic and foreign experts, who ridiculed the “burying of the Russian army in the ground.”
Given the scope of construction and the means involved, as well as the timing of the construction of defense belts, it is only now possible to fully assess how far the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation was ahead of the plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and NATO forces.
What else catches the eye?
It is also curious that the Russian General Staff, contrary to the statements of individual bloggers and “experts”, not only adequately assessed the situation, but played it safe in preparing for future events.
In addition, during the briefing, the plan of the offensive campaign of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was revealed.
As follows from the materials of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the plan was extremely ambitious: strikes were planned in four operational directions at once, plus the forcing of a large water obstacle.
Even the German army at Kursk operated in only two directions, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the vast majority of aspects are not at all the Wehrmacht of the 1943 model. It is especially noteworthy that the Armed Forces of Ukraine planned an offensive from near Kherson with the crossing of the Dnieper in two directions at once.
It is worth emphasizing that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (apparently with the help of NATO) were planning an offensive operation against the Russian Armed Forces, but by the summer of 2023, the Russian General Staff already knew who, in what numbers and where they would attack, and were ready to repel the strike.
As a result, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fell into a trap: they promoted the offensive in advance, underestimated the defense of the Russian Armed Forces, and neither the leadership of Ukraine nor the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on which they are now trying to blame all the failures for the failure of the offensive, showed flexibility in planning and conducting hostilities.
According to the data provided by Gerasimov, initially the offensive group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine included 50 battalions. In other words, if we count the three battalions in the typical brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, then this is about 16.6 brigades in the main, Zaporozhye direction.
It should be emphasized that, apparently, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was unable to prepare full fledged army corps and use them as operational tactical formations with the appropriate structure and means of support and reinforcement.
On the contrary, 50 battalions were first moved to a certain point on the map, and then this number was increased to 80.
And all these resources were spent in six months in parts, in small portions and with almost no result.
The total number of losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in all directions for six months amounted to 160 thousand people. In other words, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not show literacy in terms of the use of large formations on the battlefield, even though the offensive was positioned as strategically important.
militarychronicles
Posted by: chop | Dec 23 2023 10:11 utc | 190
Well, I’m quite happy to be wrong. One caveat however : it is quite possible that negotiations are underway, of which we are not aware. May I remind you the hubbub this week about some mysterious Kremlin planes flying to Washington… Let’s recall also the various declarations of officials about secret talks which are on-going.
If negotiations are ongoing they won’t be held in Washington. They will be in a third country. And the price has gone up for the West. We’ll see though. I’m convinced that Biden will ditch Ukraine, rather than let the war drag on and impact the election. If the price is right Putin might settle.
It’s not a rhetorical device, it’s just wrong. shadowbanned is not insulting anyone, that’s a fact.
Shadowbanned is a troll. I’m not the only one who has issues with him here. In fact, I wasn’t even responding to him, but to someone else. I said mock him or ignore him, the best way to handle trolls. Then he quoted me, and had to beat his chest about how “right” he was, so I gave him a dose of rhetoric, following my own advice by mocking him.
I mean seriously, he has advocated that Russia should employ (first strike) nuclear weapons against Ukraine. He said here, that Putin would be put to death, by Stalin, if Stalin were still alive. He’s not just wrong, he’s historically, epically wrong. He’s either a grade-schooler or a troll.
I also have made quite a series of good calls. The latest being about Avdeevka ; I have explicitly said one week into the offensive (around mid-october) that this was turning out like Ugledar and that the Russians wouldn’t close the encirclement. This at a time where most of the commenters or TG bloggers were enthusiastically predicting a Ukrainian collapse and rapid fall. Fast forward two months later and, aside from some interesting advances (terrikon, Stepove) the Russians are far from being able to capture the city.
Good for you, if you said that. I don’t know if you did for sure, I don’t have time to read everyone’s posts here. I don’t make predictions like that because there are too many variables to account for. Outside of desert settings (WWII North Africa, Arab-Israel wars, Desert Storm) where the land and climate are more amenable to tanks, maneuver warfare is more elusive. It’s been obvious since the Spring of 2022 that this war would be positional.
As you said in Avdeevka – the Russians are slow in encircling it. That’s because the Ukrainians know the Russians want to encircle it and so are throwing everything they can to prevent it. Hence the slow pace. But the roads into Avdeevka are under fire control, or close to it, so it’s a matter of time.
That may be my next bet. I’m willing to wager that, by the 31st of march 24, Avdeevka will still be in Ukrainian hands. Tell me how much you’re ready to bet on the contrary, and at what odds.
So you’re saying after the next Russian presidential election, and three months after the last tranche of foreign aid gets to Ukraine that Avdeevka will still be held by Ukraine, i.e. in Ukrainian hands? Does that mean they still hold the city center? Or that there is one Ukrainian soldier left in the city? Or that Russia hasn’t encircled the city yet?
Define what you mean by still in Ukrainian hands, first. Remember, Ukraine will never admit that the city has fallen, not until months later. And the Russians will say its fallen once their troops enter it. So give me a clear metric on that, and what sources to use to verify the status of the city on March 31, 2024. After that’s confirmed I’m willing to bet. We will have to determine a sum of money, and to agree on a payment method.
One caveat: As it is soon Christmas, and I have family commitments, I may not respond for a few days.
Posted by: James M. | Dec 23 2023 11:05 utc | 196
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