The A-10 was obsolete against enemies having modern anti-aircraft almost as soon as it rolled off the production line. It’s only good in cases of total air supremacy & completely neutralized anti-air, which doesn’t apply here.
F-16s would do better here. You don’t need to see a trench to clear it. CAS is a mission not a platform!
WTH?
Russia is taking more provocative measures against NATO member states.
The Guardian feed
Funny, I was just reading up on Kaliningrad earlier today, for completely unrelated reasons (I was curious how many bridges there are in the town nowadays).
As for the A-10, its main gun might not be much use if enemy AA is still in place, but can’t it carry a whole bunch of air-launched ordnance under its wings? It seems to me that Ukraine is making good use of what air-launched ordnance, and could use more platforms for it.
It does have a lot of air-launched ordnance, but none of it allows it to operate at standoff range vis-a-vis enemy AA. A russian S-400 has a range of about 240mi, the AGM-65 maverick about 12. An A-10 can launch dumb bombs, but for that purpose, drones are cheaper in terms of maintenance, aircraft replacement, and pilot replacement. Moreover A-10s are a lot slower and short-range than Su-25, which Ukraine already has, and knows very well how to operate and maintain.
Not that the Su-25 is ideal here, but it’s much better than the A-10 which simply isn’t a serious proposal against an adversary that has AA produced in the 1970s or later.
That being said, with the ingenuity that Ukraine has shown, I’m sure they could probably figure out some limited role for the A-10 that nobody anticipated. But it won’t be cruising along merrily raising hell on formations of Russian armor at close range like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. The right thing to send to Ukraine, as fair as aircraft needs, is F-16s.
Seems like the perfect war for the use of the CBU-97 smart-cluster bomb, which drops 40 explosive smart skeets that individually hunt for enemy targets. Sadly, that thing went out of production years ago and AIUI the number that remains in existence is very limited.
The Excalibur Increment-III smart shell would also be ideal for some real-life testing here.
CBU-97 is a) very expensive, and b) useless against widely dispersed vehicle formations.
It was intended to decimate a whole formation of a few dozen armored vehicles in close defensive formation on the move through open terrain. Which was Soviet doctrine in the Fulda Gap with thousands upon thousands of vehicles to move through there each day.
Not the tool at all for a ragged column of 10 vehicles, only 1 of which is a tank, slowly wending single file down a mud road in the Ukrainian countryside.
The latest Russian technology advance in infantry combat vehicles: the Chinese equivalent of Polaris Rangers or Kawasaki MULEs.
That, and de-turreted 50s and 60s tank chassis. Good luck egressing under fire, and have fun being reduced to smoldering paste by any top-attack weapon.
NATO is holding military exercises in the Arctic Circle. It looks like Russia is beefing up their presence there as well. I’m sure Norway and Sweden have a lot to teach.
Any Russian resources that aren’t going to Ukraine are a good use of resources.
FWIW, I’m posting from a cruise ship docked in Alta, Norway. NATO (and Europe’s longest dogsled race) doubled this town’s population last week, but they have concluded their exercises and moved on.
An interview with the PM of Estonia about NATO and the Russian elections. She doesn’t say much that’s new, but it’s still interesting. Of course, she probably has a lot she’s not allowed to say that would make headlines, as with any leader.
Follow the money, attack the refineries:
From this and other articles it seems that Ukraine has developed a new long range drone. Russia, otoh, seems to have its anti-aircraft capabilities spread thin. Seven refineries were struck last week, one every day. Still not enough but it may be a start.
Googling around, I see claims of 12 refineries by now.
This source says 13 refineries since the beginning of the year. The article describes what’s been happening, where, and what effect it’s had on Russian oil production (10 percent of production capacity knocked out of commission), and looks at possible future effects.
This is old news from February but I just learned about it. The DOJ’s Russian sanction task force has been doing some good work.
Half a million? That’s not much.
Every little drop in the bucket……
Yeah. Half a million is about 3 minutes worth of rifle ammunition. Well over half a million was spent on the adminstrative effort needed to locate that money.
Color me appalled that anyone on the good guy side would consider that to be a noteworthy achievement.
maybe they just worked on getting the process in place and going …
and will be ramping up from now on?
Once you know how (legally) you can get to $500k … it should work the same for $5000000k 
otherwise … jeah …
Russian and Ukrainian athletes are barred from the Olympics unless they play as neutrals. Of course, Russia is going to do its own big sporting event (“with blackjack! And hookers!”).
(Emphasis added.)
Correction: Russian and Belarusian, not Ukrainian.
The agressor and their cobelligerent, not the victim of the aggression.
But regarding the news itself, not surprising and also welcome. The aggressors have to understand the depth of their pariah status.