Statistically unlikely, there are very few in the country and they are being prioritized for air defence. Missions like this are far more high risk and after the early loss of an F-16 there will be no rush to expose them to front line conditions.
Statistically unlikely, there are very few in the country and they are being prioritized for air defence. Missions like this are far more high risk and after the early loss of an F-16 there will be no rush to expose them to front line conditions.
The US are using their influence to prevent it. France and the UK had already given permission for SCALP-EG/Stormshadow to be used. According to articles quoting a state department source, the US told Ukraine they could compromise aid if they used another nations weapons, regardless of permission. That article pointed out that the US policy doesn’t allow for a defeat of Russia that would make a “reset of relations” difficult. This slow political pressure is needed to more publicly isolate the American position and force concessions.
Unfortunately I can’t find the article again, I believe it was in Forbes. It was mentioned in a Military & History update on Ukraine.
It’s a tremendous idea for Ukraine to deploy Gripen. It is much better suited to the logistics and distributed operations model being used currently. It also has integration with Stormshadow and Meteor missiles, which the F-16 doesn’t. Obviously Stormshadow is already in the Ukraine inventory and Meteor would be a very powerful addition to extend out past the reach given by F-16 and AMRAAM.
Targets like this are unlikely to ever be serviced by drones like Baba Yaga. This looks like multiple 1000lbs glide bomb hits, the Baba Yaga can carry 33lbs. By the time you have built the capacity to deliver powerful explosive force like this remotely you’ve already crossed from cheap drones to ballistic and cruise missiles. Most of the long range drones in use by Ukraine are carrying 40kg warheads. Cheap solutions just don’t have the hitting power, and by the time they are scaled up, they’re just the old expensive solutions.
That is actually a very meaningful order. I had to check, did they mean launchers or batteries. Looks like 17 batteries. That’s pretty big, IRIS-T is very modern kit.
Basically the story is that the CEO of the company that built it, before the investigation has been done, blames the crew. It couldn’t have been a structural or design failure, again, according to the CEO of the builder. This is an interesting case, maybe it will be on What’s Going on With Shipping one of these days.
Based on the other bridges taking bomb strikes, perhaps we can say… soon?
This would be pretty straightforward. Anyone who takes them up would be admitted as an asylum seeker under international law. Fleeing warzones is a common cause for people to seek asylum in another country.
I’m not 100% sure this is HIMARS. Due to American restrictions they may want to use their own MLRS, they have a Ukrainian system with similar capabilities. Mainly I’m not seeing the signature radius of fragmentation that the GMLRS rockets produce.
They didn’t mistake them for Palestinian civilians and gun them down? Standout operation I suppose.
Definitely one of the Russian platforms that had proven effective in it’s intended role. The KA-52 fleet has taken a lot of casualties fortunately.