I wonder if there are plans to blow up the entrances to the Bakhmut salt mines?
Make it difficult as possible for the Russians to make a fortified base.
It would take time to dig out the mine entrance. Especially if it’s a elevator that the miners use. It can easily be blown up.
From what I can gather, the Leopard 2 tanks Ukraine is receiving are comparable to the Abrams tanks the US used in the 1991 Iraq war. Of course as that war showed, even 1980s era western tanks are significantly better than 1980s era Soviet tanks. And it also seems like Russia is now down to 1960s and 1970s era Soviet tanks.
I think the closest comparison would be the Abrams from the 1991 Gulf War against the tanks the Soviet Union was using during their war against Afghanistan.
ETA. I don’t think the Leopard 2s are actually 30 years old, it’s just that the technology is 30 years old.
What?
… what?
If they like Russian solutions then put a gun in their hands and take them to the front lines if they crave conflict.
There is always enough clearance under the catenaries. If the wires need maintenance the power is off, naturally, and you move the equipment around with locomotives that don’t need the overhead power on, typically diesel-electrics these days. I don’t know the particulars for Ukraine railroads. The loading gauge1 varies from country to country and Ukr uses the Russian gauge of 1,520mm instead of 1,435 like most of the world, but in the US your typical car and locomotive height is 16 feet2 and the wires are 18.
1How big the equipment bulks up above the rails. US and UK railroads share the same track gauge but American rolling stock would have trouble fitting through British tunnels.
2Except double-stacked containers on well flats. You don’t see them under wires.
Edit: Dunno how I jumped clear back to November but I put too much work into this to delete it.
Purportedly most or all of that complex is already in Russian hands. It is in the suburb of Soledar that fell to Russia in January.
If you are already depressed from fighting in a war you don’t beleive in, would going underground help your morale? Did soldiers in WWI enjoy trench warfare? Being stationed in a mine that the enemy knows everything about can’t be good. Who knows how many weak spots or traps they put in there, waiting for the right time to hit the right spot with a volley of artillery fire to make a tunnel roof collaspe or the floor to fall away from under you.
I think the idea of holding the mines is that they potentially make for a better-than-average storage depot, somewhat sheltered from artillery strikes. So holding it allows the Russians to move munitions to a forward staging area (i.e. the nearby Bakhmut front lines), without suffering quite the same logistics crush caused by Ukrainian long-distance HIMARS strikes on supply lines.
It’s useful to hold and presumably makes the Ukrainian military’s job more difficult in the area, currently the focus of heavy fighting. But taking it isn’t a tactical masterstroke necessarily, rather just one more useful strongpoint.
Assholes
I’m glad they were caught.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/politics/americans-arrested-aviation-technology-russia/index.html
With their company having such a nondescript name as KanRus, it’s a wonder their business of smuggling aviation technology from Kansas to Russia didn’t just fly under the radar. Must have required some top flight police work for the authorities to land that indictment…
It probably wasn’t a bad business model before Putin decided to give the free world the finger.
Ethics caught up with them in the end though.
now, that video is REALLY quite something
(the russian AWACS plane that got partially destroyed a couple of days ago in belarus)
which also makes me wonder how much of shenanigans could be potentially pulled there … e.g. place a small explosive on the rear horizontal control surfaces and set it off a couple of seconds after take off (with the expected results)
Nice bit of rust on the radome. I wonder what shipyard builds their planes?
They plan to drive the pilot nuts with that damn noise.
I watched that video and had no idea what it’s about?
Finland has started building a stronger border wall with Russia. Smart idea.
My read is that they landed a drone on a Russian AWACS-style plane, and then flew off again with zero interference or anyone apparently even noticing. Which is a spectacular security breach, especially if - as later demonstrated - the drones come by with boomy things attached.
It is supposedly the reconnaissance of a Russian A-50 AWACS in Belarus by Belarusian partisans, made prior to them later launching an attack with two small drones and a small amount of explosives. It shows them landing on the rather rough-looking surface of the radar dome. The damage inflicted by the later attack doesn’t seem to have been extensive judging from released satellite photos, probably because purportedly only 0.4 lbs of TNT was used. Still, embarrassing for Belarus and Russia that civilian drones could just wander into a restricted airspace and attack a massively expensive and very important aircraft.
Russians build a movie set for future World War I movies:
One of the lessons of this war was discovering just how important and decisive drones are proving to be on the 21st century battlefield. WW1 style trenches are still useful on the defensive, but here too, drones are rendering them much less effective, as they can drop a grenade with precision from directly above.