The War in the Ukraine

Nill said:

That is not a dirlewanger patch i've read it is a ukrainian military patch of some brigade or something and it is white maces rather then the black grenades with white outlines of the dirlewanger patch.

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If that were the case, we would have more clearer pictures of this patch on other soldiers in different areas of the front. Thing is, so far, we have seen Ukranian soldiers sport more nazi patches than proper unit/division patches, so until a clearer picture shows up, occam's razor.

The patches that could be confused with it usually have extra elements to it, not just two maces on black background

T-90M, BMP-2 near Svatovo

7 BMP-3's arriving as reinforcement in Bakhmut



Claims Wagner has captured Andreevka and other towns nearby Bakhmut

gelgoog said:

I keep seeing people saying this. Alexander Mercouris being one of these people. That no one outside the Soviet space makes diesel locomotives for Russian track gauge. Which is simply not true. Like I said here before US company GE Transportation made diesel locomotives for Kazakhstan for example.

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There's a difference between being able to make and being able to deliver with short notice. According to the Wikipedia link, most of those are actually built in Kazakhstan, with only a small handful being US made, and a delivery time of something in the order of 2 years.

It is actually a bit of a problem, because of the track gauge, Ukraine is in a pool of countries that aren't likely to be willing to supply locomotives at short notice. They aren't completely without hope however, the Baltic states, Moldova and Finland use compatible equipment and are in the process of moving over to standard gauge.

WarAndPeace said:

Who knew hobby quadcopters would have become the most deadly weapons in the war against infantry?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1597210149613375488

KUB drone strike. Unlike Lancet, these appear to lack EO guidance.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1597209364817141761

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Infantry could evolve after that war, full body armor against shrapnels will certainly be envisaged in trench warfare like that. The problem will be weight and cost. These quaadcopter ammunition are rather small. Against artillery is another thing...

Better infantry carried detectors against these quadcopter and some kind of shotgun round to shot them down could be designed. Something that will divide at setted altitude to have descent range. Buckshots still travel at more than 100m but the spread will be horrible. That kind of weapon could be dual use and smaller than these huge sized UAV jammer.

Civilian quads are making a disproportionate impact on this war because neither side has the means to effectively counter them while also being able to use them en mass.

But the tech to counter these drones are already available off the shelf, and I expect far more effective counters will be easily developed. The most simple and cost effective would be area wide Wi-Fi jamming. Downside would be high power consumption, and also makes your own commercial drones useless.

A more advanced hard counter could be a home-on-Wi-Fi suicide drone of your own, similar to anti-radiation missiles used against radar. Could have a few of these effectively on patrol over your positions indefinitely with rota. If they take off in a hurry, might also be a idea to seek cover. Early warning and counter drone in one affordable little package.

As soon as something like this enters the market, the days of using commercial drones in combat is over. Because commercial drones will never be developed to counter this sort of specific military application, it won’t be an arms race, it will just be a slaughter of the side stupid and desperate enough to still be using commercial drones even for passive activities like recon.

WarAndPeace said:

In future wars small quadcopters could be deployed in the thousands at the squad level. It would be as common as RPG launchers. It isn't so far fetched to imagine small quadcopters taking over the role of RPG launchers. These can strike targets more than a dozen km away with pin point accuracy. And with thermal, at night too.

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None of those will be civilian drones.

Military small drones will have a revolutionary impact on future wars and will probably fundamentally change urban combat forever. But that will be well beyond the capabilities of civilian drones.

The PLA are already looking to spam swarm drones from every available platform, and i personally think it will only be a matter of time before we see things like powered munitions dispensers that are tailored to shower an area (say a beachhead) with swarms of AI controlled suicide drones capable of chasing down prey even in woods and buildings.

These drones will open up entirely new uses other than direct replacements and upgrades to MLRS or grenades.

plawolf said:

Downside would be high power consumption, and also makes your own commercial drones useless.

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I think that's the main issue, particulary for the Russias. You can't deploy high powered area jammers without affecting your drones


According to this NYT piece, at least a third of the western howitzers in use by Ukranians are out of service at any given time waiting for repairs and maintenance, particularly as there is ammo being used that hasn't been certified for the howitzers that are firing them, causing extra wear and tear.

To carrry out this maintenance, the wapons have to be hauled back to Poland and then back to the front. Gonna take a wild guess that the lack of electricity will complicate the logistics of shipping the howitzers back to Poland.

The Ukranians are firing 2000 to 4000 rounds a day and the wear and tear has caused that systems like the M777 lose range and accuracy.

And they are still pushing for the North Korean provided rounds to Russia narrative with still no evidence of it.

WarAndPeace said:

I wonder if Russia has ordered countermeasures for DJI drones which Ukraine bought in large numbers from Poland? There has been quite a number of An-124 flights between Russia and China in recent days.

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Most of the best off-the-shelf solutions are probably not available/suitable to the Russians since jamming would be the most effective and low visibility means, but the Russians also use a lot of DJIs so that might be too high a price to pay to stop what, in the grand scheme of things, are just annoying nat bites from drone dropped grenades.

Chinese laser based drone defence systems are probably going to be too high profile since China still wants to at least try to keep the EU from jumping all in with America. Not to mention the ‘small’ matter of Russian pride.

Yes, they bought Iranian suicide drones, but those are seen as cheap and cheerful low end systems that in no way challenge the sophistication or technical superiority of Russian systems. Buying high end Chinese systems far superior to anything Russia can build themselves will be much harder to rationalise for the Russians.

I suspect any assistance China offers will be much more low key and harder to trace and prove. If Russian ‘independently and indigenously’ develops new weapons systems that look Russian but are stuffed full of Chinese components, who can definitively prove that these are Chinese systems in Russian shells and not just Russian systems built with AliExpress parts?

WarAndPeace said:

Reportedly inmates are hired to build tanks in exchange for reduced sentences.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1597290748663111685

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1597290751540744193

It seems another recon satellite was launched. Russia regrets being complacent in recon satellites before February.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1597254586381004802

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They just began ? Other nation are doing that nonstop...


I hope they are doing good quality control, it's way more sensitive than road repair, natural disaster assistance, forestry work, and maintenance of parks, schools, and government offices.

Atomicfrog said:

They just began ? Other nation are doing that nonstop...

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I hope they are doing good quality control, it's way more sensitive than road repair, natural disaster assistance, forestry work, and maintenance of parks, schools, and government offices.

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Prison companies like have been involved with remanufacturing of military vehicles for a while now.


You can check out some of their prison labor products on their and . There is also that others can outsource to (). Watch their nice show casing their work.

Accusations of other nations using prison labor gets thrown around quite frequently in media but it's a very common practice in the US. This is allowed in the US under

Some are publiclly traded like .

Ukraine's drone finds cemetery of tanks inside Russian border​

This isn't the first such site to have been located.

In September this year, a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone flew into Russian territory and captured footage of hundreds of damaged battle tanks, howitzers, and infantry fighting vehicles damaged in the conflict that began earlier this year.

Ukrainian military website has shared the footage captured by the drone on social media sites.
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Unmasking Russia’s influential pro-war ‘Rybar’ Telegram channel​

The war in Ukraine has created an influential new Russian media space with an audience of tens of millions — channels on messaging app Telegram that specialize in war reporting and analysis. One of the most significant among them is the anonymous channel with 1.1 million followers. Rybar publishes detailed reports and accurate maps of the front lines that are heavily used by Western and . The Bell conducted an investigation ( and) to find out who runs this key outlet.