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The Ukraine War thread

I can't get this one to work (old tablet), but it's supposed to be France considering sending personnel to Romania, to upskill their military, train Ukrainian military closer to home, and loiter around Moldova and Odessa.

Of course, Macron's got an election coming up, and Le Stylo is very much a Russian puppet (and known to be very sympathetic)

 
Dunno if its wishful thinking or not, but just throwing this out there.

Seen a few people speculate about the number of flight hours being accrued in the airframes of the Russian Air Force.

We all know how fantastic their maintenance schedules appear to be, and its also fair to say that expertly trained Ivan and élite Igor are probably not the smoothest on their machinery - especially with the Ukrainian IADS hounding their asses.

Anyway, bottom line is the RuAF may have a bit of bother fielding aircraft by late summer at the sortie rate they have been. Which may also coincide with the Ukrainians getting F-16s. RuAF "happy time", such as it is, may be drawing to a close.


And sure while I'm here. Anyone any statistics on Russian (refined) oil output? Story is the Ukrainians have put a sizeable dent in Russia's ability to refine oil... and repairs for the refineries require sanctioned Western components.
 


Well this is going to help them!

The Russians are putting their air frames through it to a point but they have the new SU-57 coming into service now and most of their aircraft basically take off, drop a glide bomb and land. They are not facing any real combat with a peer adversary. The F-16s they Ukraine are getting are hardly the newest airframes either but are hopefully better maintained.
 
The Russians are putting their air frames through it to a point but they have the new SU-57 coming into service now and most of their aircraft basically take off, drop a glide bomb and land. They are not facing any real combat with a peer adversary. The F-16s they Ukraine are getting are hardly the newest airframes either but are hopefully better maintained.

From what I gather production rates on Su-57 are around 12/year at the moment.

Broken Wing could prob explain better than me, but its not just fatigue loading on the airframes, which, as you say, should be relatively negligible for a 9g rated airframe unless Ivan and Igor are utterly incompetent (Which we shouldn't rule out). But avionics and ancillaries wear and engines especially wear.
 
as far as I recall, unless you overstress the airframe that's not the greatest concern. More the engine.

Obviously the Russians may have different priorities.
 
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And here we see the failure of the west. When we had to really step up and face Putin down, we again failed. Too busy getting caught up in internal politics, facing outright Russian sympathisers and a general unwillingness to accept some hardship to assist another nation against Russia has all been brought to the fore. Putin now knows the west doesn't have the stomach to stop him. We are setting such a bad ******* precedent here for all those expansionist dictatorships around the world. We can't be motivated to stop it happening right on our doorstep so why would we defend say Taiwan if China invades?

Hell we don't even have to send our own troops to Ukraine, we just had to ensure they were kept supplied and we couldn't even do that. The industrial power of Europe eclipses that of Russia and we could outproduce them if we wanted...
 
And here we see the failure of the west. When we had to really step up and face Putin down, we again failed. Too busy getting caught up in internal politics, facing outright Russian sympathisers and a general unwillingness to accept some hardship to assist another nation against Russia has all been brought to the fore. Putin now knows the west doesn't have the stomach to stop him. We are setting such a bad ******* precedent here for all those expansionist dictatorships around the world. We can't be motivated to stop it happening right on our doorstep so why would we defend say Taiwan if China invades?

Hell we don't even have to send our own troops to Ukraine, we just had to ensure they were kept supplied and we couldn't even do that. The industrial power of Europe eclipses that of Russia and we could outproduce them if we wanted...

America is the main problem here IMO. They are as divided as I have ever seen and both sides are completely consumed with pleasing their domestic audience and winning votes at the next election. As a result they seem to be stepping back from their self proclaimed 'leader of the free world' or alpha of the west role. Many republicans are pushing a narrative that supporting Ukraine means less money being spent domestically. They don't see Ukraine as their fight given it's so far away. Maybe they don't care if Putin expands his borders a bit. Backing Israel wins way more votes than backing Ukraine and I think that is what will determine which fights they choose to get involved in given the race to the Whitehouse is so tight.

I think Europe has finally woken up to this and is realising that America can't be relied upon anymore hence the sudden push to spend more money on defence. It's not just Russian gas we need to wean ourselves off, it's American backed defence and security, especially when you've got idiots like Trump encouraging Russia to attack any NATO member that doesn't pay their share. Perhaps NATO is a bit obsolete now. Perhaps we are seeing the start of a new world order.
 
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