Agree. An interesting question is how much they’re willing to draw down their own stocks in exchange for what sorts of payments.
Putin creating chaos and significant armaments consumption in the West has got to make opportunists like both Xi and Kim more actively consider whether soon is their own best time to move on Taiwan or SK respectively.
IMO Xi is much more interested in taking Taiwan than NK is interested in taking SK. NK’s interest is much more in not being overrun themselves by SK than in overrunning SK. Although god-kings of any nation have a bad habit of deciding on slim evidence that the best defense is a good offense right about at this point in their reign.
Actually NK ended up with most of the peninsula’s mineral deposits, which is the reason it held 80% of the heavy industry back at the outbreak of the Korean War. Natural resources it has - the industrial capacity to exploit them properly, not so much.
In an apparent effort to confuse Ukrainian UAVs, the Russians are now stacking tires upon parked warplanes. I guess their air defense system is beyond being improved.
The primary reason is to breakup/ change the visual picture of the “target”. British Storm Shadow and French Scalp missile’s terminal guidance depends on high resolution photo matching. The Ukrainian Neptune missile does the same capability reportedly. Russian naval forces have repainted their ships to change the outline. You have to alter the outline in both visual and IR spectrum. This won’t help with the quadcopter attacks. They’re attempting to deal with those with civilian patrols around the airbases.
If these improvised countermeasures prove effective that’ll certainly be something for the West to incorporate in the vNext revision of the seeker software. If that’s possible without otherwise wrecking the seeker specificity or some other essential feature.
Overall, this provides an excellent example of “The enemy gets a vote”. The Russian organization collectively may be sclerotic and criminal, but individual Russians are just as smart and can be just as motivated and resourceful as any other farmer, soldier, or engineer on Earth.
Of course, a freighter going from, say, Chongjin in North Korea to Vladivostok in Russia could keep its course within the territorial waters of the two countries, making interception problematic at best and a casus belli at worst.
Agree completely. And a good point you’ve made. Although IMO more as a matter of principal than practicality.
For that route (NK to Vladivostok) railway would be best.
Once the NK’s are loading it on a ship, that suggests the reason they’re loading it on a ship is that the rail route is unusable or is already at capacity. Or the cargo is very large, such that it doesn’t transport by rail at all.
Just on the basis of relative lengths, I’d suggest if there are railway problems of whatever nature the very long Vladivostok to e.g. Rostov line is the problem rather than the much shorter line in NK leading to to the bridge into Russia. And for sure the outsized cargo problem would exist on both sides of the border.
My bottom line: if the NK’s are loading the stuff on a boat, Vladivostok is the one port they’re not trying to take it to.
Later high resolution photos show that many of the aircraft are unservicable, missing propellers in the case of the Bear bombers. Similar to the A-50 AWACS plane that had a plywood panel covering a window poorly with snow getting in the cockpit.
I have no doubt that many clever people in Ukraine are working very hard right now to see that this information does spread as widely in Russia as possible.
ETA: We should ship them a bunch of T-Shirts: I invaded Ukraine and all I got was this lousy washing machine.