Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[DGuller]

I think he can stand in Red Square and take a briefcase full of cash in front of 100 cameras, and it will not remove doubt among those who need it most.

[Syt]

Just read that Wagner will be renamed. To Afrikakorps. Seriously. 

Well, they are quite active in Africa, but still.

(Actually, seems German FAZ referred to them after the failed coup last summer in an article lead as "Putin's Afrikakorps")

[Josquius]

Interesting recent events beside the war coming from Russia.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2024/01/31/gps-spoofing-is-now-affecting-airplanes-in-parts-of-europe/

Incidents of GPS spoofing leading aircraft off-course in the Middle East now have company in Europe. Russia is the source.

According to public aircraft tracking databases, aircraft flying in the Baltic region of Europe have been experiencing varying degrees of interference with GPS signals for the last month. The problem was particularly notable during the Holidays.

Breaking Defense reported that a spike in GPS jamming on Christmas and the following day affected a large area of northern Poland and southern Sweden. On New Year's Eve, aircraft across southeastern Finland reported disruptions. Areas in Poland again experienced GPS disruption in mid-January. As the month wound-down, southern Sweden, northern Poland, Estonia and Latvia were impacted.

Analysis of the jamming and spoofing by the University of Texas Radionavigation Laboratory (UTRL) detected the sources much in the same way spoofing sources near Tehran were located using satellites in low earth orbit.

Zach Clements, a graduate student at UTRL, told Dana Goward (president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation) that researchers there were confident that Russia is the source of the spoofing. A number of transmitters across a large area jammed GPS to deny service and at least one was actively spoofing aircraft in such a fashion that their instruments would indicate they were flying in a circle far from their actual location.

Goward noted that this kind of "circle spoofing" has been frequently observed with ships. The Holiday incidents were the first time it was reported in aviation. According to Clements, "the location the aircraft were spoofed to is a field about a kilometer from Russia's decommissioned Smolensk military airbase."

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The scale of the spoofing and the fact that some aircraft avionics suites appear to have been "captured" (GPS, INS, autopilot and other systems led astray) suggests the trend seen in the Middle East since the fall of 2023 is now present in Europe.

Late this afternoon, I spoke by phone with Dana Goward who is also a member of the President's National Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing National Advisory Board.

Goward says pilots with several major air carriers have told him that they have begun disabling their GPS navigation systems when flying through the regions of northern and Baltic Europe mentioned above to prevent spoofed data from contaminating their other nav systems (inertial navigation, LORAN, etc.).

The spread of the sources emitting GPS jamming and their mobile nature indicates they are likely coming from ships of the Russian Navy. Goward cited Russian-language media and other reports calling attention to the migration of jamming. Ukrainian media he says reported that since Mid-December 2023, units of the Russian Baltic Fleet have undertaken electronic warfare exercises in the Kaliningrad area.

SINGAPORE-AVIATION-AIRBUS-SIMULATOR
Captain Yann Lardet, General Manager of AATC Airbus, inside the simulator of the A350 XWB cockpit. ...

• AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Russia's motivation for conducting GPS spoofing and jamming around the Holidays could be simple harassment or linked to issues including the expansion of NATO with Sweden and Finland's ascension to the Alliance. A U.S.-supplied Aegis anti-missile system recently deployed to northern Poland may also be a target for the jamming which adds a challenge to the system's largely radar-based interception.

Interestingly, GPS jamming and spoofing are phenomena within Russia itself. "There's all kinds of jamming going on within Moscow and St. Petersburg and areas northeast of the Donbas," Goward affirms. "That almost certainly has to do with the Russians being concerned about defending against Ukrainian drones."

GPS spoofing popped up in Russia well before its war with Ukraine. Goward mentions a 2016 Moscow Times article which quipped that "the Kremlin eats GPS for breakfast". The jamming disrupted UberUBER +1.4% and other terrestrial GPS-dependent services as well as any threatening drones in the vicinity. Goward says Russia has employed GPS spoofing to throw drones off the locations of the dacha-holidaying dignitaries in the country's Black Sea resort areas.

Spoofing of GPS within its own territory imposes less burden than might be expected for Russia since the country long ago developed its GLONASS satellite navigation system. It is possible to jam or spoof GPS without affecting GLONASS (or China's Beidou satnav system) Goward says though challenging.

"We've seen Russia do that in northern Norway. The Norwegians actually took pictures of an oscilloscope and said, 'Look at this neat, square [jamming] wave. It just hits the GPS frequency but doesn't touch GLONASS frequencies right next door."

Russia could also pivot to a terrestrial navigation system called "Chaika" which is similar to Loran. It also has a lesser-known system - possibly a mobile, military navigation and timing system for space-denied battle - called "Scorpio". It must be remembered as well that Russian air transports are not overflying Europe these days, as such GPS disruptions in the region are not a concern.

But western airliners and private aircraft overflying Europe almost all rely on GPS though some also use Europe's Galileo satellites for navigation. As in the Middle East, spoofing and jamming puts lives and property at risk. Thus far however, Russia has suffered no consequences for its actions.

Goward points out that intentional GPS interference violates an international law and a regulation agreed upon by member nations in the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union (ITU). While it may be a "gray zone" tactic, GPS jamming is tantamount to warfare Goward asserts.

He suggests a proportional response to Russian GPS spoofing could be denying it new frequency allocations for satellites. These are granted by the ITU and withholding them could have significant economic and strategic consequences for Russia.

With half a dozen or more Russian GPS jamming or spoofing exploits targeting northern and Baltic Europe in the last month or so, the time to act on such responses is now.

[jimmy olsen]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/04/the-clock-is-ticking-as-ukraine-destroys-more-russian-vehicles-faster-the-kremlin-could-run-out-of-fighting-vehicles-in-six-months/?sh=4ff53ffac5e2

The Clock Is Ticking As Ukraine Destroys More Russian Vehicles, Faster. The Kremlin Could Run Out Of Fighting Vehicles In Six Months.

On each of 705 days since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, Russian forces on average have lost—destroyed, abandoned or captured—19 tanks, fighting vehicles, howitzers or other heavy weapons.

On Saturday, they lost at least 54. Another 16 were damaged. Saturday was, in other words, one of the worst days of the war for Moscow.

Open-source analyst Andrew Perpetua, who tallies vehicles losses and publishes a daily list, noted the tragic record on Sunday, after adding up Saturday's losses. "It's the most I've ever found in a day," he wrote.

Ukrainian losses were light: nine vehicles destroyed, abandoned or captured and other 21 damaged.

Worse for the Russians, their losses included 16 tanks and a staggering 29 fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, while Ukraine's losses mostly were trucks and civilian vehicles the military apparently was using for supply runs. The Ukrainians lost two tanks and a single APC.

To be clear: the wrecked vehicles Perpetua counted on Sunday weren't necessarily lost on Saturday. But since he counts losses every day, the date he tabulates a loss is a useful stand-in for the actual date of the write-off. Just subtract 24 hours.

The obvious question is whether this loss-rate is sustainable for the Kremlin. The obvious answer is: no. As production of new armored vehicles continues to lag, the Russians still mostly ride in older Cold War-vintage vehicles they've pulled out of long-term storage.

These reserves are finite. One analyst who goes by @HighMarsed scours satellite imagery in order to track Russia's stocks of old vehicles. In December, they concluded the Kremlin had reactivated 1,081 of its pre-war inventory of 4,811 old BMP fighting vehicles.

But of the remaining 3,730, at least 765 were "visibly broken beyond repair."

In 2022 and 2023, according to the analysts at Oryx, the Russians lost around 80 BMPs a month. If that rate of loss had continued into 2024, while production of new BMPs also remained steady at between 30 and 40 a month, the Kremlin would've run out of fighting vehicles in two years or so. Say, early 2026.

The problem, of course, is that so far this year the Russians are losing more and more vehicles, faster than ever. They lost 13 BMPs—plus addition BTR fighting vehicles—in a single day, according to Perpetua's Sunday tally.

That implies a monthly loss-rate for BMPs approaching 400. Five times the rate we observed in 2022 and 2023. At the current rate, Russia doesn't have a two-year reserve of fighting vehicles.

No, it has maybe a six-month reserve. The uptick in losses—to levels that are far beyond sustainable for Russian forces—also is evident among tanks and APCs.

Despite pro-Russia Republicans in the U.S. Congress cutting off aid to Ukraine last fall, despite the best efforts of authoritarian Hungary to block European aid to Ukraine, despite Russia's bigger population and bigger economy compared to Ukraine's, despite everything, Ukrainian troops aren't just holding. Launching drones and firing from trenches, they're winning the war of attrition.

The even better news for friends of free Ukraine is how much ground the Ukrainians are losing as they wreck Russian assault groups: very little. In the most violent sector of the front—around Avdiivka—on one of their costliest days of the war, the Russians advanced a hundred yards in the south and three-quarters of a miles in the north.

No rational and moral commander would trade 54 armored vehicles and, according to the Ukrainian general staff, more than 800 troops ... for a few hundred yards.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Orcish hordes aren't rational though

[Josquius]

Things seem to be going well in Avdivka.
Worrying news a little while ago with Russia suddenly seizing tonnes of territory- they'd been very intelligent and managed to sneak in behind the Ukrainian lines using a sewer pipe the Ukrainians somehow just hadn't thought about. They absolutely routed the Ukrainian defenders.
....
But then they received absolutely zero follow up support. Seems the Russians just hadn't planned on what to do if the plan worked. They're now being mopped up and surrendering.

[Tamas]

Noice

[DGuller]

Things seem to be going well in Avdivka.
Worrying news a little while ago with Russia suddenly seizing tonnes of territory- they'd been very intelligent and managed to sneak in behind the Ukrainian lines using a sewer pipe the Ukrainians somehow just hadn't thought about. They absolutely routed the Ukrainian defenders.
....
But then they received absolutely zero follow up support. Seems the Russians just hadn't planned on what to do if the plan worked. They're now being mopped up and surrendering.

Where did you read it?  I see nothing but doom and gloom.

[Josquius]

Things seem to be going well in Avdivka.
Worrying news a little while ago with Russia suddenly seizing tonnes of territory- they'd been very intelligent and managed to sneak in behind the Ukrainian lines using a sewer pipe the Ukrainians somehow just hadn't thought about. They absolutely routed the Ukrainian defenders.
....
But then they received absolutely zero follow up support. Seems the Russians just hadn't planned on what to do if the plan worked. They're now being mopped up and surrendering.

Where did you read it?  I see nothing but doom and gloom.

The story is floating around in a few places. Googling avdivka sewer pipe you see a few reputable news stories with some things to say about it then its quite a buzz on social media https://twitter.com/aldin_aba/status/1750595201511624771

[DGuller]

Things seem to be going well in Avdivka.
Worrying news a little while ago with Russia suddenly seizing tonnes of territory- they'd been very intelligent and managed to sneak in behind the Ukrainian lines using a sewer pipe the Ukrainians somehow just hadn't thought about. They absolutely routed the Ukrainian defenders.
....
But then they received absolutely zero follow up support. Seems the Russians just hadn't planned on what to do if the plan worked. They're now being mopped up and surrendering.

Where did you read it?  I see nothing but doom and gloom.

The story is floating around in a few places. Googling avdivka sewer pipe you see a few reputable news stories with some things to say about it then its quite a buzz on social media https://twitter.com/aldin_aba/status/1750595201511624771

I don't see a lot of positives even in that story.  Even if that particular unit didn't fully exploit their breakthrough, at the end of the day, the Russians still seem to control a lot more Avdiivka than they did just a short time ago, and they still threatened to cut off supply routes that would necessitate abandoning the whole city.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Isn't that already a bit out of date, with additional gains for the orcs at the other end of the town

[Josquius]

The vibes to me seem to be the worst is over in Avdivka with the Russian offensives lessening dramatically, their progress slowed to a crawl and the casualty rate being very favourable for the Ukrainians

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Ugh, if I see one more idiot claiming that sucker Carlson engages in real, uncensored journalism...
Jeez, excluding the bots, trolls, collaborateurs and traitors, there are so many people incapable of recognizing propaganda.

[Josquius]

Apparently one side of the US government has passed the Ukraine aid bill?
Things looking up?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Apparently one side of the US government has passed the Ukraine aid bill?
Things looking up?

Don't count on it,it's only in the senate