Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Interesting choice of flight path. I have never seen something like this before.

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the hea said:
Interesting choice of flight path. I have never seen something like this before.
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I admit I don't follow such things, but why is it unusual? I would expect it to be pretty normal to have a patrol flight along the Russian border?
 
stefan92 said:
I admit I don't follow such things, but why is it unusual? I would expect it to be pretty normal to have a patrol flight along the Russian border?
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I have never heard of a US Airforce plane flying this deep into the Gulf of Finland before, let a lone a strategic bomber and heading straight towards St Petersburg. It flew very close to the Russian Island of Hogland and can't have been many km's away from the Russian border when it turned south.
 
the hea said:
I have never heard of a US Airforce plane flying this deep into the Gulf of Finland before, let a lone a strategic bomber and heading straight towards St Petersburg. It flew very close to the Russian Island of Hogland and can't have been many km's away from the Russian border when it turned south.
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This made me curious and I googled a bit... it looks like this route is sometimes used, but not regularly. Here a report from 2021 about two B-1B on essentially the same route: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...in-provocative-show-of-force/?sh=1a5842ad20ac

I also remember an incident a few weeks ago where Russia started jets to intercept a German reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea, near Kaliningrad as well as reports about Sweden and Germany starting fighters as well to intercept Russian planes.

So patrol flights (and reactions to it) over the Baltic Sea definitely are common, but the involvement of US strategic bombers indeed seems to be rare.
 
stefan92 said:
This made me curious and I googled a bit... it looks like this route is sometimes used, but not regularly. Here a report from 2021 about two B-1B on essentially the same route: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...in-provocative-show-of-force/?sh=1a5842ad20ac

I also remember an incident a few weeks ago where Russia started jets to intercept a German reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea, near Kaliningrad as well as reports about Sweden and Germany starting fighters as well to intercept Russian planes.

So patrol flights (and reactions to it) over the Baltic Sea definitely are common, but the involvement of US strategic bombers indeed seems to be rare.
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Yeah, it was probably to remind Putin that he is not the only one who can threaten. If you keep silent long enough, people start to forget about you. From time to time, you have to flex your muscles.
 
stefan92 said:
This made me curious and I googled a bit... it looks like this route is sometimes used, but not regularly. Here a report from 2021 about two B-1B on essentially the same route: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...in-provocative-show-of-force/?sh=1a5842ad20ac

I also remember an incident a few weeks ago where Russia started jets to intercept a German reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea, near Kaliningrad as well as reports about Sweden and Germany starting fighters as well to intercept Russian planes.

So patrol flights (and reactions to it) over the Baltic Sea definitely are common, but the involvement of US strategic bombers indeed seems to be rare.
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Yes flights over the Baltic sea are common as is flights in the air space of the Baltic countries. But flights with US aircrafts in the Gulf of Finland like yesterday is something I can't remember seeing before.

This shows just how close they where from entering Russian air space.

 
the hea said:
Yes flights over the Baltic sea are common as is flights in the air space of the Baltic countries. But flights with US aircrafts in the Gulf of Finland like yesterday is something I can't remember seeing before.

This shows just how close they where from entering Russian air space.

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Gotta say it was about time that the US sends the message across for the number of times I've read about an isolated Tu-95 flying close to Western airspaces.
 
RedDevilQuebecois said:
Gotta say it was about time that the US sends the message across for the number of times I've read about an isolated Tu-95 flying close to Western airspaces.
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To be honest I feel like it's more important to send the message that nothing gets unnoticed than to do bomber patrol flights. But luckily NATO does both and at least the German Luftwaffe reports quite regularly when it's meeting Russian planes that are flying without transponders or flight plan in the area. Some examples from recent weeks:



 


Some murmurs about ukrainians in Nova Kakhovka, could be gun jumping from these clips, was a battle few days ago there though:

 
ShoePolish said:


Some murmurs about ukrainians in Nova Kakhovka, could be gun jumping from these clips, was a battle few days ago there though:

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There are daily reconnaissance missions across the Dnipro. It's nothing unusual. They try to find concentration of menpower, artillery systems and probe the defense at the same time.
 
Stack said:
Thats exactly what I thought. Watching two men be killed
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I don’t know if you watched all the reply videos that show the whole thing but it seems one survived as the Ukrainian soldiers drag him away and tourniquet his leg. They they then place him in the trailer of a truck and he is taken away to what I presume is a place he can get medical treatment.
 
Could them restarting these flights towards Russia be linked to the Russians using the Kinzhal missile recently? - I'd imagine you want to not only remind the Russians of your capabilities but also check if the Russians had redeployed any air defences from the North to bolster defences against Ukrainian strikes towards Russia.

I' reckon a co-ordinated flight towards Russia while other assets are used should give you a great amount of data on response times, radar installations tracking you and radio chatter getting air defences on standby and this would provide a wealth of intelligence that might be useful to...anyone that might want to be targeting Russia about now.
 
Simbo said:
Feck knows what the implications of this are.

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This could become interesting. Baikonur is critical for Russia because it's the only spaceport usable for manned flights, so the entire Russian ISS supply would be at risk.

It also is a problem because the heavy Proton launch vehicle only starts from here - it's last launch for example was a military communication satellite.

But we will see what really will happen. Russia and Kazhakstan arguing about Baikonur is happening every few years. But in the current political climate, with Kazhakstan slowly realigning itself more towards China instead of Russia, this could become more serious then before.
 
Simbo said:
Feck knows what the implications of this are.

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If nothing else it will cause issues for supplies on the ISS and moving of astronauts depending what pans out.

It's interesting about the debt though, as there's been two big issues with the Soyuz capsules recently (the most recent has meant a planned resending of a replacement by Roscosmos) and it was becoming obvious they were having bigger issues than normal despite them claiming that wasn't true.

If there's any concerns about safety at all I would have thought that the US will send a dragon capsule to get the astronauts off the station as they won't want to take risks and that could be a bigger issue for the upkeep of the ISS.
 
Is it expected that Ukraine will soon have to give up Bakhmut? Are they capable of launching any sort of counter offensive as long as they have to commit significant numbers of troops there?

I don't disagree with the argument that if they leave it it will just be the same in the next town. I just wonder how, or if at all, Ukraine will manage to unbog the situation.
 
pierrethesnack said:
Is it expected that Ukraine will soon have to give up Bakhmut? Are they capable of launching any sort of counter offensive as long as they have to commit significant numbers of troops there?

I don't disagree with the argument that if they leave it it will just be the same in the next town. I just wonder how, or if at all, Ukraine will manage to unbog the situation.
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Not really, but they are very confident at their saying and we saw how successful there were with Kherson's surprise attack, seeing how most of the latest tanks and other artillery isn't even fully got to Ukraine, if they have most of the stuff ready and set - there will be some sort of attack coming.
 
pierrethesnack said:
Is it expected that Ukraine will soon have to give up Bakhmut? Are they capable of launching any sort of counter offensive as long as they have to commit significant numbers of troops there?

I don't disagree with the argument that if they leave it it will just be the same in the next town. I just wonder how, or if at all, Ukraine will manage to unbog the situation.
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I think they are capable of both at the same time. First of all, offense and defense need different equipment. To hold Bakhmut, they need menpower, artillery, drones and anti armor weapons. But to attack, they need most of all MBTs and IFVs to breach russian defenses. Of course you need significant numbers of troops for both, but it seems like a shortage of troops is not a problem so far. There are also thousands ua soldiers in training in many western states right now. I believe Ukraine has enough reserves, especially because they don't throw them into the meat grinder like Russia does. Development of smart tactics together with Nato, western equipment and a good healthcare greatly increase the life expectancy of a soldier. As soon as the western armor arrives, we can expect Ukraine to take the initiative again. It won't be as easy as the last one of course, because even Russians learn through mistakes, but I think they had more than enough time to prepare a good tactic.
 
I think it's actually time for a new thread to talk about Russia in a non Ukraine invasion context.

Take this film (not sure where I came across it now) which will probably lead you to the conclusion that it is nigh on impossible to imagine Russia as a "normal" country any time in the next 50 years.

Putin and his FSB are utter scum.

 
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