I mean that’s just a slight expansion of pre-existing policies. They’ve been steadily expanding their convict legions for years now. First it was the Wagner Group, then Storm-Z. Followed recently by Storm-V, who in the final apotheosis of the common Russian trooper back to their 18th century status as essentially military slaves, get the fantastic award of no pardons after serving. Assuming they survive, which considering how they are used seems mighty unlikely for most.
They’re also scraping deeper into the barrel in the search for warm bodies. Convicted sociopathic murderers make the best soldiers don’t you know. All wartime armies are variably bad at human rights at the end of the day - it’s the sad nature of war. But the motto of the Russian army has long been “it could always be worse - here, we’ll show you how.”
I might have objected to targeting Russia’s civilian small business early in the war.
But, Russia’s targeting of electricity and gas in Ukraine hurts civilians much more. People can get sick with pneumonia and freeze to death in unheated buildings.
The strategies are similar. Russian civilians lives are made more difficult and they know it’s because of Putin’s war a thousand miles away.
Hey, what happened to my order? Why hasn’t it shipped?
I’m sure the warm bodies coming out of Russian prisons are the peak of health and physical strength. Struggling against malnutrition and tuberculosis makes one stronger.
The current casualty rate is 1,300 per week killed or seriously wounded. Full mobilization might yield 1 to 2 million troops. That would last almost 30 years at the current rate. But that would impose serious effects on the economy as well as popular support for continuing the war.
That’s at current recruitment rates, which are still largely volunteers and young draftees (18-30). Full mobilization would tap into a much larger pool of conscriptees. Putin has avoided this because of economic and social consequences.
I’m a bit confused about the importance of the Patriot missiles? I thought the Patriot’s brains were the Ground Control radar? I quoted from Wikipedia.
The physical missiles have to “talk” to the guidance & radar components. But, IMHO it seems like a good design should be adaptable to many types of smart missiles. The Patriot System shouldn’t be useless without a consumable part like the missile. The expended missile falls to the ground. Any foreign agent could salvage the electronics and reverse engineer how they work.
What am I missing? Why does Ukraine and many other countries have billion dollar defensive weapon systems and no bullets? The reported cost of each Patriot missile is staggering.
A drone was seen by a Leipzig airport employee on Tuesday 4 August evening. Police explosive experts defused an apparent bomb.
Other media reports mentioned that Ukrainian freight aircraft were parked in the vicinity, and that a DHL freight aircraft due to land that had to go around due to the airport’s emergency closure reported a collision with an unknown object, suspected to be another drone that had been detected previously.
That sounds to me like a printers-and-ink business model. The missiles are expensive because the company that makes the missile wants to make a lot of money selling it.
Ehh, sounds like a missile system designed in the 1970s that was designed to attack manned aircraft, later pressed into attacking other things that travel through the air. Adding capability costs money, after all.
And really, that price isn’t crazy. The more advanced missiles for the S-400 system range from 1 million to 2 million dollars each, and those are made with Russian labor costs.
Nonetheless, the “best at any price” gold standard for Western weapons systems isn’t a good fit for Ukraine, which has survived by using cheap* and fecund means.
∗“cheap” of course being relative when modern weapons are the subject.
The Handelsblatt [in German and paywalled, I fear) reports:
The drone is reported to have been found near a Ukrainian Antonov An-124 aircraft. This is one of the largest commercial transport aircraft in the world. The German Armed Forces have also chartered such aircraft in the past to transport particularly heavy loads.
Given the presence of the Ukrainian aircraft, it seems likely that Russia is behind the incident. However, Dobrindt [Federal Minister of the Interior, P-L], who had specifically cut short his holiday in Italy to travel to Saxony, did not explicitly name Russia. He did, however, suggest that the masterminds behind the incident could be “foreign powers” seeking to stir up unrest.
In addition, the authorities are searching for parts of a suspected second drone that may have collided with a DHL cargo aircraft. The aircraft had taken off after a runway was closed and was struck by an object in the process, resulting in minor damage.
Germany is not prepared at all to deal with drones. Almost nobody is, it seems. This will have to change fast or disaster is unavoidable.
Other German reports now say that a driver of one of Leipzig Airport‘s buses happened to pass by the low flying drone, got out, fished it out of the air and got it to the ground. I presume he now reconsiders this course of action knowing it had ~ 800 g of Semtex on board.
This news is a couple days old. An Italian munitions factory blew up. AIUI, this factory was a source of munitions sent to Ukraine. Fortunately, there were no casualties, since the factory was closed for summer holidays.
Investigation is still going on, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the cause was either Russian saboteurs or drones. If so, we may expect more drone attacks against European munitions factories.