Ukraine Always Get What You Want

Is it weird that this story has only appeared so far at websites like 'The Drive' and the 'Hindustan Times'?

Seems that something like this would get pretty wide, immediate play at major news outlets.

 

The War Zone, which is the companion site to The Drive, is one of the better general military news sites out there. Tyler Rogoway and his staff have done a tremendous job during this war. They're aggregators, yes, but they do a good job of explaining for the laypeople what something means or how it works, and why having it or losing it is important. That link I posted, for example, includes some stunning before and after satellite photos of the blast site.
Their commenters are very smart as well. I learn as much from reading those as I do the stories.
What they do especially well is giving some depth and context in the middle ground between the two shallow ends of the news reporting pool — the possibly sketchy initial reports and open source intelligence folks on Twitter, and the 30-second version you'd get on a lot of mainstream sites.

All of which is to say, I highly recommend following The War Zone if you have an interest in this stuff. It's top-notch, and it's trustworthy.

 

OK, if they’re aggregators, from where are they aggregating this particular story?

 

It’s real. There was an attack in that region. It isn’t clear if it was an ammo depot. Russia says yes. Ukraine says “critical infrastructure.”

May 13, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news | CNN

 

The War Zone is indeed the gold-standard of reporting on most everything DoD and Ukraine related, IMO. Sure, they are aggregators in the sense that they link to other, quality fact-gathering OSINT and military sites, but they also have a roster of staffers who have deep experience in the field.

 

It's a mix of places. A lot of open source intelligence, which can be incredibly detailed and effective these days. Some forensic analysis. A splash of general knowledge.
There are folks on Twitter who do the open source intelligence thing that are a good initial source. Then The War Zone reporters, I'm sure, have their own sources they confirm with, mixed with some basic background reporting and knowledge of the subject.

For example, this story. Huge explosion in Ukraine. OSINT community reports the boom and where it happened. TWZ reporters start looking at the area, what it was, and what was known to be there. They often look at publicly available satellite photos from a few days earlier and today, which can both show the damage and confirm the boom. In the case of something like an airfield, they can even determine what types of planes might have been destroyed.
The scope of the damage can also give an idea of what weapon was used to hit the place. A Russian missile of X size couldn't have caused that level of damage, but a Russian missile of Y size could. Or the explosion was so large and the damage so great that no single weapon short of a nuke could have caused it. We know no nukes were used, we know it wasn't a fuel depot, so it must have been an ammo dump/warehouse and the damage was caused by secondary explosions from something stored there

Like any other story, the pieces start to come together.

 

First training pilots are on their way

 

"It's time to buzz The Kremlin."

 

There is no air war over Ukraine. The home country enjoys complete air superiority. So I have my doubts about adding to Ukraine's air power — unless they have designs on projecting it deeply elsewhere, which I wouldn't necessarily reject.

 

What’s Russia’s air capabilities at this point? Surface to air missiles? Radar?