There is a minor difference between a 75-year-old design which is still in active production (like the M-2 machine gun) or active maintenance (like the B-52 bomber) and a 75-year-old design which has been sitting untended in an open-air rustyard for the last 50 years.
Still, these things may have some utility in the battlefront. They’ll force Ukraine to waste scarce antitank ammo against them.
What I’ve been seen speculated is that insomuch as we haven’t seen much in the way of significant armored battles in this war, they probably aren’t intended for mechanized warfare where they would come apart like tin cans. More likely they’re just going to be used as indirect fire platforms - a poor man’s mobile artillery. Something they’re not that well-suited for with their crappy gun elevation and low caliber. But supposedly the Russians still have a lot of old moldering 100 mm shells in storage and any port in a storm, I suppose.
There may or may not be. It depends on how those things were stored. The U.S. military retires aircraft to the ‘boneyard’ and sometimes calls them up again after a long time if they get short. Ships go into ‘mothballs’ and sometimes reenter service after being retired.
Take the USS Missouri. Bult in the 1940’s, it was mothballed in 1955, and sat in mothballs for 29 years. Then it was reactivated and refurbished in 1984, and served in the Gulf war. It didn’t get mothballed again until 1992.
The B-52s in question haven’t been pulled out of the Boneyard. And the M-2s are possibly brand new.
And even if we were talking about pulling US assets out of mothballs, they were almost certainly kept in better condition that Russia’s rusting wrecks.
Lord Palmerston of England said much the same thing in 1848:
And I think that is often overlooked in our discussions here. Ukraine’s ‘permanent interests’ is to survive and thrive as an independent nation, something they have attempted several times in the past few centuries. Russia’s is more complex, being a combination of ‘making sure we are secure from invasion’ and the old ‘obtain a warm-water port’ (those two have been around for centuries).
The problem is sometimes leaders can get caught up in ‘minor/present-day’ interests that primarily benefits them, albeit usually (sometimes distantly) related to their permanent interests.
It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Press on.
Direct flight, no disassembly, trucking, rail delivery. Another of the ever popular Russian/ US redlines crossed. (Attach appropriate wailings and lamentations, assorted nuclear threats, saber rattling here)
Updated percentage of country’s GDP contribited to Ukrainian defense.
Just to be clear. Those are Ukrainian pilots in planes with Ukrainian insignia.
The article said that Slovakia had stopped flying them. Are their pilots training for F-16s, or are the Migs in bad shape?
I’m surprised that the Russians don’t have air superiority.
The former - deliveries were supposed to start next year. The MiGs were retired just six months ago and presumably some or all are still perfectly useable. Poland and the Czech Republic are patrolling Slovak air space in the interim.
and as an added bonus: they might ACTUALLY be there … like with engines in them and so …
what? … didn’t you get the memo in march 2022?
Did you watch the video? No insignias. They still had the Slovakian camo scheme.
No insignia, and Slovak camo, but Ukranian pilots nonetheless.
I’m sure they’ll get the insignia issue squared away chop-chop. As to camo, the point is to not be easily seen, so if it’s working right it doesn’t matter whose preferred camo pattern it is because no one will see it.
Shifting spheres of influence in Asia as Xi invites the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the first China-Central Asia summit:
I hope the Slovakia planes came fully loaded with missiles and ammunition.
I haven’t heard if Ukraine has many missiles for aircraft.
Ah, so it’s China’s turn to play The Great Game…Great Game - Wikipedia
But will they avoid the Afghan briar patch?
Forbes article about Ukraine’s homegrown suicide drone capabilities.
This article cleared up something that I hadn’t understood before. A lot of suicide drone attack videos show the drone swooping down to kill armor, even main battle tanks. I didn’t understand how you could hope to kill something that well armored with a lightweight improvised weapon.
Turns out the warhead is intentionally anti-armor and not improvised:
I guess that would work, especially since the drones often make top- or rear-attacks.
Well, it’s nice to see they’re taking advice from a professional for once.
I wasn’t aware that drones could lift so much mass.