Ukraine Always Get What You Want

It’s a huge deal for sure.

I wonder what the No-shit state of Russian surface action groups was. Did they have picket ships that dropped the ball? Is there no CIWS?

Meh then again, given what we’ve seen from the Russian army, the cruiser was probably sitting still with broken engines a mile and a half off the coast, actively pinging sonar with fully radiating air surveillance radar while shooting off flares every five minutes.

 

I don't think anybody is sending their best stuff. Everybody who uses old Soviet/Russian gear is looking to offload it. They soon won't be able to get parts for it anyway. The European countries that have homemade stuff are offering their oldest equipment, like the Germans who were proposing giving the Ukrainians 1990s era Leopard tanks that are a couple of generations out of date. There was talk today that we might give Ukraine some Russian helicopters that we have in storage. They were originally intended for the Afghanistan air force before the Taliban took over again.
It's a military garage sale, and Ukraine is the old babushka who shows up at 7 a.m. to get first crack at stuff.

 

Yeah we don’t even give our best friends the very best stuff.

Gotta hold a little back …

 

The report reads "Was hit", not "Was sunk". More than likely they got in a hit with a drone or missile. I think that if it had been a big anti-ship missile that had a chance to sink it we'd be hearing more about it. It's still striking a blow at an enemy who thought they could not be touched. Good for morale for UKR, bad for Russian (to the extent that anyone hears about it).

 

I was thinking defense contractors are probably over there giving stuff away - show it off. Nothing like a real-world demo to make a sale.

 

There was another good Twitter thread I read, from Mark Hertling, breaking down why it's no so easy to just give the Ukrainians more advanced equipment like M1A1 tanks and F-16 jets. Not only would you have to pull tank crews and pilots off the front line to spend a few weeks training them, you'd also have to spend a lot of time training the maintenance crews to keep them running. And then you have a whole new supply chain of parts and ammunition to deal with. And on top of that, the equipment itself is a bit more complex than the current Russian-made equipment they're using, so anything that breaks or gets broken is more difficult to repair.
It's a whole daisy chain of potentially bad consequences.

 

The reports are that a missile hit the Moskva, and that it was on fire and part of the crew was evacuated.

That's a solid hit, even if it does not sink. Legit physical damage and big strike on the macho confidence level.

 

https://nypost.com/2022/04/13/nine-women-and-girls-pregnant-after-rape-by-russian-troops/

 

There have been some unique Russian units that have been spotted. Limited-edition versions and prototypes of various tanks and armored vehicles, AA units, stuff like that.
One thing a lot of people were expecting to show up that hasn't is the T-14 tank. It's their next generation tank, and they were supposed to have a couple thousand of them ready by now. Nobody has seen a single one in Ukraine. All of the tanks they've used (or at least the destroyed ones that have been catalogued) are older T-72, T-80 and T-90 models.
The Su-57 fighter, which has had a very limited production run, has also been noticeably absent.

 

First production run was canceled, at least partially because Russia couldn’t afford to pay for them. I believe they were supposed to try again this year, but who knows?

 

I have no reason to doubt that. But I'll be shocked if Biden announces we have or are sending "advisors" to Ukraine. It sounds way too much like Vietnam. Lots of folks would recoil at the use of that term.