Attacks on Moscow are probably intended to boost morale in Ukraine as much as inflict any damage (physical or psychological) on Russia. It’s been more than a year of hardship for Ukrainians and Ukrainian forces need to show that their capabilities have increased, not decreased during that time.
Yes, attacks into Russia make more sense as an Ukrainian-morale boosting exercise than an attempt to lower Russian morale, historically that kind of attack tends to just create anger in the target’s population.
More important is what they’re not going to do. They’re not going to decide Putin is a poopy head. To the degree they had wished the war was over and were only sullenly cooperating with Russian authorities, now they’ll be rah-rahing the war.
Again I’m not suggesting making these sorts of attacks is a bad thing; far from it.
But some enthusiastic commentators have gotten ahead of the story claiming these kinds of things will open the cracks in the Russian regime and let the discontent of the masses pour forth, perhaps sweeping Putin onto the ash-heap of history. Nope sez I.
If one is the country being attacked in the war, then one’s choice is to capitulate or to increase determination to fight harder. If one is the aggressor country in the war, then one’s choice is to increase determination to fight harder or to stop attacking the defending country.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey researched into the effects of air raids on the willingness and ability of the German population to support the war effort during World War II. While written by the victors, their conclusion was that German morale was weakened.
So suppose in november 1970 the Vietnamese detonated a bomb in Manhattan, would that have the effect of increased or decreased support for the war in the U.S.?
Your view of the war is not necessarily the same as the view of the average Russian, to you is obvious they are the agressor (and to me too, to a extent), but not to them.
Insofar as allied bombing in Germany, I would say that:
- The US had an interest on saying that bombing served a purpose, no nation is going to say “Ok we mostly killed a lot of civilians for no useful purpose, our bad”.
- If in fact the allied bombing decreased morale it was probably because it was a really huge bombing campaign, not a pinprick here and there but the devastation of whole cities, nothing like the drone raid over Moscow.
And said saturation bombing had been going on for a year or two by the time those surveys were conducted.
The message of drone attacks into Russia doesn’t have to be a morale based one. It can simply be telling the Russians: don’t deploy all of your air defense to protect occupied parts of Ukraine, because if you leave strategic or symbolic targets open in Russia, they can get hit.
Yeah, I guess it force the reds to spread out their air defense and dilute it. And maybe leave more important stuff fatally vulnerable to drone attack.
Incredible that the Russians think they can abduct children so brazenly.
Prigozhin says top Russian brass should be investigated to see if they committed crimes. As the saying goes, a broken, bloodthirsty mercenary clock is right twice a day.
And NATO is doing exercises in the Arctic Circle with new member Finland, which I’m sure Putin loves.
A Russian Missile probably intercepted falls on Kyiv Road.
It looks like no one was injured, hopefully true. Full article below in case other link fails.
I love how everybody just keeps on driving, steering around the rubble like it’s no big deal. Although I believe the driver of the white compact had to change their underwear.
I know I would have. Holy crap. And I use to complain about my commute.
Yorkshireman: Two hour backup, you’re lucky. We had missile debris falling on the road.
The drone wars are picking up again. Ukraine managed to sneak a couple through and start a fire at a refinery in Krasnodar. Doesn’t sound like it was a very big fire, but it’s another attack could take some pressure off the Ukrainian Air Force if Russian assets have to be pulled back from the border to protect deeper into Russian territory.
Here’s a nice update from Sky News on the drone attacks and the replacements for the Wagner group in Bakhmut. In short, their analyst feels the Bakhmut replacements aren’t all that great, but that’s because Bakhmut was more symbolic than strategic and Ukraine won’t waste lives trying to recapture the city. The counter-offensive will likely fall somewhere else.
https://youtu.be/tzTLh356j30
Nyet, you apologist! Traffic light was always intended Target of Glorious Soviet Russian missile attack! Now Traffic will stall as no one will know when to drive safely!
I’m surprised the sky isn’t thick with drones. They are super easy to make, and by now a concerted effort to make cheap drones should have produced thousands. For something like an attack on Moscow, you wouldn’t even need radio control - just a GPS target coordinate. $50 bucks worth of Arduino, a couple hundred bucks in a motor and battery and servos, and you have a throwaway drone that could drop a surplus grenade (of which there is a nearly unlimited supply for this purpose) on any target within the GPS’s accuracy radius.
Lot of fuel to get to Moscow, makes a bigger more observable drone. GPS jamming is extensive in many areas. You’d still need to trigger the release of the grenade.
The drone would be an airplane, not a quadcopter. If it’s a kamikaze drone you don’t have to release the payload. Just have a little device that pops the lever when the plane crashes.
You can make these kinds of drones out of cardboard. They would have low radar observability, and you could fly them by the hundreds and force Russia to use a lot of air defense missiles bringing them down or accept some damage to oil refineries, etc.
Here’s a little foam RC drone that can fly 240km:
It’s bigger brother, the Talon, can fly even further, and you can buy the airframe on Amazon for $300 CAD.
If you really want to RC them all the way, there are long range radios, videos cameras, FPV goggles etc.
just for perspective - what AA looks in practical terms