Not really in the sense that you shoot the missiles and immediately move. The battery has the single powerful radar. Not possible to hide its emissions. There will be a number of erector/launcher/transporter trailers. Those are scattered about and in contact with the engagement control system by cable or radio. When the radar is being moved, there are no launches going on. The single radar unit does the detection/identification/tracking and illumination of targets when the missiles are launched to when the target is hit.
The Wiki goes into greater detail - number of launchers/missiles per launcher are variable based on the type of missile.
That’s simply not true. you can can interrupt power without doing any real damage. The idea would be to trigger a cascade power failure that requires a manual switching to get it back online. It would show Russians what they’re doing to Ukraine without any long term effect.
Even if so, is that the best use of Ukraine’s available military resources? Every missile and drone used for that is one not killing Russian soldiers or materiel; IOW exactly the mistake Russia is making by wasting (in a military sense) their missiles and drones on civilian infrastructure.
I don’t think there is an action that Ukraine can take that would (a) cause the Russian people to feel the pain of this war while also (b) not blaming Ukraine for the pain. Certainly nothing that would start a revolt.
If they just switched off a power station, Russian state television would broadcast all the babies and old people that died because of it.
If Ukraine is going to go to the risk of an operation inside Russia, it should be to disable an ammo dump or similar. Not to drum up Russian civillians ire.
Sure, and I expect to see more IFVs sent along as troops continue to get trained. But they’ll have a lot to talk about - the Ukrainian army may have to change some of it’s small unit tactical doctrine to accomodate the Bradleys, it’s not just a question of learning the weapons system technology.
In the U.S. model, 50 IFVs would be about enough to outfit a full battalion of mechanized infantry. It would be interesting to know how Ukraine plans to use them - shock troops for an advance, exploitation units once a breakthrough has been made?
Putin’s at zero risk of a popular anti-war rebellion. Please provide evidence if you think otherwise.
The actual risks to Putin are from two directions. First, from various hardliners who want Russia to be more aggressive in the war. These are people like Prigozhin. While Putin cowers in the Kremlin and offers a unilateral Orthodox Christmas ceasefire, Prigozhin visits his Wagner troops on the front lines and delivers an engraved sledgehammer of the sort that Wagner uses to brutally execute deserters. Second, and more remotely, there’s a chance of outright mutiny in the army a la 1917. Putin’s chief challenge is in walking the line between not pushing his strained military resources so far that they mutiny, while still appearing bloodthirsty enough to prevent the hardliners from gaining traction.
Attempting to discomfit Russian civilians by attacking electrical infrastructure would actually make Putin’s position less uncomfortable. By creating extra grassroots anger against Ukraine, it would make a mutiny less likely because the Russian troops would feel more like they were fighting on behalf of their family back home, rather than just being sacrificial pawns for Putin’s ambition. That would give Putin additional space maneuver.
Ukraine’s offensive resources are best reserved to strike military targets only. If the Russian populace doesn’t feel under threat, it makes the pain and suffering of the poor sods on the front lines seem all the more pointless.
The way to “make the Russian people feel the pain” is for Ukraine to just keep on doing what they’re doing, kicking the butts of Russian soldiers every chance they get. Suffering of the Russian soldiers is likely to be blamed on Putin, not on Ukraine, because of course Ukraine is hitting the soldiers whenever they can, but the reason they’re succeeding so much at it is Putin’s incompetence. And the more Putin escalates the war, the more soldiers he throws into the meat grinder, the more ordinary Russian citizens there are who know some of those soldiers personally.
This war does have the potential to destroy Russia, but it won’t be Ukraine’s doing. If Russia were really worried about it, they’d stop the war, which they could do as soon as they decided to.
Based on the successful ‘thunder runs’ they executed during the Kharkiv offensive, my guess is they’d like to use them as exploitation units. But merely having these better quality IFV’s will open new tactical and maybe even operational options for them
I remember the Bradley’s had a lot of problems in Iraq. The floors were thin and vulnerable to IED’s. Sand clogged the engine. IIRC was it the Bradley’s that would turn over? 60 Minutes did a piece about vehicles flipping over on turns. It may have been a different vehicle.
I remember a news piece about a base in Iraq that had a full time shop upgrading the Bradley armor. They were getting hammered by IED’s.
I hope the Bradley’s sent to Ukraine has been improved.