Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[NAVY 6,747]

Here is a gift article from my account 

https://wapo.st/49FniT5 

[atomheartbevo 89,788]

1 hour ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Could the Russians reenforce Transnistria if they wanted to? Seems like existing Patriot batteries could do a good job covering the approaches by air and it would be easy to cover what appears to be the only sea lane. Round up the 2,000 or so Russian soldiers and tell Russia to get fucked. 

Yeah, they couldn’t reinforce it by sea or air - would be easy pickings for the Ukrainians, and very embarrassing.  It was another reason Russia needed Odessa.

[InkaUtexas 26,094]

1 hour ago, F250 said:

Didn't they try doing something about it 30 years ago?

 

Yes, but there was a lot going on internally. Three options come to mind. I like #2 with a 10 year mandate. Absorbs into the nation. Bilingual schools, etc.

1- Give the Russians free passage home. Troops and any civilians.

2- Declare it a UN protectorate, disarm the Russian troops. Insert Peacekeepers.

3- let Moldova into NATO now, as there is no ongoing conflict. Then tell the russians they are invaders and please go home.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,587]

3 hours ago, kevwun said:

I wonder how many times he shot himself?  5,6, 27?

"I like suicide."

[Brisketexan 105,319]

Just now, InkaUtexas said:

Yes, but there was a lot going on internally. Three options come to mind. I like #2 with a 10 year mandate. Absorbs into the nation. Bilingual schools, etc.

1- Give the Russians free passage home. Troops and any civilians.

2- Declare it a UN protectorate, disarm the Russian troops. Insert Peacekeepers.

3- let Moldova into NATO now, as there is no ongoing conflict. Then tell the russians they are invaders and please go home.

My take is that Putin is setting up the following steps:

1) get Transnistria to say "oh my god, the Moldovans are gonna genocide us, please protect us mother Russia!"

2) Russia says "yes, we will protect you, if only those NATO Nazi bastards would let us come to help you."

3) EITHER a) a false flag attack on Russians in Transnistria, or b) Moldova actually moves on them.

4) Russia now has an exhibit case to attack any other country with ethnic Russians in it (see: the Baltics) because the evil NATO Nazi west has proven that it won't protect ethnic Russians, and will in fact attack them.

Moldova needs to not take the bait.  And we need to broadcast far and wide that Russia is planning an attack on its own people.

Oh, and also, we need to move fucking assets to the Baltic.  Now.

[InkaUtexas 26,094]

And the Balkans. I would expect putin to say he is the hero of all slavic people. Get the Serbs to do some shit.

[Shaddie 1,651]

3 hours ago, NAVY said:

Here is a gift article from my account 

https://wapo.st/49FniT5 

Not going back and looking but I think earlier here someone posted that we have already cancelled some reconnaissance helicopter programs due to effectiveness of drones. Read that somewhere. I am assuming it was due to drones

Edited February 23 by Shaddie

[Armybrat 40,898]

Russian national - who is a legal permanent resident of the US - arrested in Austin for money laundering. 
 

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/russian-national-with-ties-to-vladimir-putin-arrested-in-austin/

[atomheartbevo 89,788]

11 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

Russian national - who is a legal permanent resident of the US - arrested in Austin for money laundering. 

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/russian-national-with-ties-to-vladimir-putin-arrested-in-austin/

And he was helping Russians avoid sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

He has a house in Tarrytown, which is somehow not surprising.  

[bolverk 29,717]

33 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

Russian national - who is a legal permanent resident of the US - arrested in Austin for money laundering. 
 

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/russian-national-with-ties-to-vladimir-putin-arrested-in-austin/

 

21 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

And he was helping Russians avoid sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

He has a house in Tarrytown, which is somehow not surprising.  

GRUhorn/Immaculate Vibes/Satoshi/.../.../.../.../.../Boss Hogg?

[Trey3216 15,355]

4 minutes ago, bolverk said:

 

GRUhorn/Immaculate Vibes/Satoshi/.../.../.../.../.../Boss Hogg?///JosephStang

FIFY

[Armybrat 40,898]

Does not compute

[27-25 2,055]

For those who call for the Europeans to donate their "fair share" before we do more.  It appears they already are doing so.

 

[Trey3216 15,355]

1 hour ago, 27-25 said:

For those who call for the Europeans to donate their "fair share" before we do more.  It appears they already are doing so.

 

No run that over a 30 year timeline and we'll be getting somewhere.   

[Dahobbs 17,682]

5 minutes ago, Trey3216 said:

No run that over a 30 year timeline and we'll be getting somewhere.   

What? Have we been providing Ukraine significant material support for 30 years? 

[statsman 5,478]

“The very existence of Ukraine is fatal for Ukrainians,” said Medvedev, who heads Russia’s ruling party. “They will understand that life in a big common state, which they currently dislike very much, is preferable to death. Their death and the death of their loved ones. And the sooner Ukrainians realize it, the better.”

Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the world is watching to see if the U.S. remains committed to European security, writes the WSJ's Yaroslav Trofimov.
https://www.wsj.com/world/will-the-u-s-abandon-ukraine-168c4a0a?st=3l7nan5798cl40p&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

[Viper 12,112]

Another one...

 

 

 

 

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

Ukraine is trying to shape the airspace as they get ready for F-16s to arrive. Using Patriots this way is high-risk and high reward.  I like it. 

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

What? Have we been providing Ukraine significant material support for 30 years? 

Yeah, we were sending a few dozen javelins and running training. Our communicators need to do a better job separating this from the ongoing defense budget discussions. 

[Parliament 14,292]

What's the high risk part? 

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

16 minutes ago, Parliament said:

What's the high risk part? 

When you are using the system to track and intercept things like AWACs, you’re also telling the Russians where your radar is. 
 

You’re also getting it closer to the lines where Russia can target it. 

Edited February 23 by 956 Worldwide

[Trey3216 15,355]

1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

What? Have we been providing Ukraine significant material support for 30 years? 

Have those NATO countries been spending accordingly on defense for the past 30 years??  

Edited February 23 by Trey3216

[blacklab 11,950]

take this conversation to the CR

[Trey3216 15,355]

6 minutes ago, blacklab said:

take this conversation to the CR

Lol.  Jesus 

[blacklab 11,950]

Oh, my bad, didn't realize we were in the Trey's hot takes on military spending Europe vs the US thread

[Trey3216 15,355]

10 minutes ago, blacklab said:

Oh, my bad, didn't realize we were in the Trey's hot takes on military spending Europe vs the US thread

My bad.  Didn't realize we were in the "let's look at a snapshot of data and use it without the context of decades of other data" thread either.  It's a legit question that isn't some fucking political backand like you think it is. What I said is true.  So is that little snapshot.  Maybe, just maybe, Ukraine would have more kit in country had their neighbors not sat on their ass for 30 fucking years letting the US do all the heavy lifting re:military spend.  Maybe they'd have more kit in country if some folks would stop fucking up the process of getting them more.  Maybe this wouldn't be happening if we didn't sit with our dick in our hand 10 years ago.  Lot of fucking maybes and mights.  But we know what they say about mights...

 

/end rant 

Edited February 23 by Trey3216

[Trey3216 15,355]

And I've unabashedly supported Ukraine from the jump, and will continue to do so, because......FUCK RUSSIA!  

[bolverk 29,717]

I really wish we could've somehow preserved the "What's happening in Ukraine" thread from 10 years ago when this all started. 

@blacklab Is that all gone forever? There was so much great stuff in that thread.

For Many Ukrainians, It’s Been a 10-Year War, Not a 2-Year One

They were a ragtag army, fighting with baseball bats, Molotov cocktails and plywood shields. But for Ukrainians, the protesters who faced off with riot police on Kyiv’s main square a decade ago were the first soldiers in a war still raging today.

The demonstrators were part of the Maidan uprising of 2014, when Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the decision by President Viktor F. Yanukovych to forgo closer ties to Europe and instead more closely align Ukraine with Moscow. In the uprising’s violent, final days police killed more than 100 protesters.

Their portraits now adorn a wall of honor at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv. They are displayed first, ahead of portraits of soldiers killed in the simmering, eight-year conflict in Ukraine’s east that served as a prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. And a museum dedicated to the street uprising identifies those who died on the square as the first soldiers killed in the war with Russia.

This connection Ukrainians make between the 2014 rebellion and the invasion two years ago reflects the long view of war that many citizens hold: They’ve been fighting Russia for 10 years, not two.

Portraits of people killed in the Maidan uprising are displayed inside St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came in two phases, Ukrainians point out. The first was a decade ago when Russian soldiers came over the border soon after Mr. Yanukovych was driven into exile, igniting the war in the east. It was a military intervention unacknowledged by Moscow, shrouded in a fog of ruses and denials so improbable that few were deceived. But it nonetheless served to blunt both the Ukrainian and international response.

The war pivoted two years ago to an unveiled effort by Russia to seize territory militarily and redraw European borders. This week, as the world observes the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians recall the anger and resolve that drove the 2014 uprising as well.

“We have always been fighting Russia,” said Capt. Oleh Voitsekhovsky, who joined the army directly after protesting on Maidan Square, fought in the war in the east and is still fighting today. His view of Ukrainian history, he said, is of a continual struggle against Moscow. “It is just sometimes cold and sometimes hot.”

In its final days, the 2014 uprising nearly collapsed as protesters held only a few hundred square yards of soot-smeared paving stones and had resorted to burning heaps of tires to keep alight a giant bonfire that was holding back riot police.

Police snipers fired into the crowds, leaving bodies scattered on the pavement in central Kyiv. The protest ended with security service chiefs and protest leaders cutting a deal, and with the police pulling back and leaving the capital. This betrayal left Mr. Yanukovych without protection, and he fled to eastern Ukraine, and then to Russia on Feb. 24, 2014.

During the Maidan uprising, police snipers fired into the crowds, leaving bodies scattered on the pavement in central Kyiv.

In a video address to the nation on Tuesday in observance of the 10th anniversary of the sniper shootings, President Volodymyr Zelensky drew a line from the Maidan uprising to the trench warfare today. Ukrainians will fight, he said, “in the squares, on the barricades and today at the front.”

After driving out Mr. Yanukovych, many protesters believed they had secured Ukraine’s freedom. In fact, the war had just begun.

Russia’s response to Maidan became a simple but effective trick: It deployed soldiers in uniforms without insignia in the Crimea Peninsula and identified them as angry locals or members of motorcycle gangs. The ruse was transparent, but it succeeded in slowing the Western response amid discussions of the origins of the ostensible mystery soldiers.

Ukraine, still wobbly under an interim president appointed by Parliament, initially sought to avoid a war.

Capt. Yuriy Fedash of the Ukrainian navy was trying to rebuff Russian efforts to board and seize his ship in March 2014 when he received an order from Kyiv emblematic of Ukraine’s cautious, first response: “‘Don’t give up but don’t shoot,’” Captain Fedash said he was told.

Russia deployed soldiers in unmarked uniforms in the Crimea Peninsula and identified them as angry locals or members of motorcycle gangs, helping to slow a Western response.

Seeing no way to resist without fighting, Captain Fedash disobeyed, he said in an interview: He ordered sailors to fire warning shots from a heavy machine gun, sending up sprays of seawater. They were among the first shots fired by Ukraine’s military in the war but did not prevent the eventual seizure of the ship.

By the time Russian tanks rolled across the border two years ago, roughly 400,000 Ukrainians had already fought the Russians in eastern Ukraine. By sustaining years of low-intensity war in the east, Russia, paradoxically, had prepared the Ukrainian army to rebuff a countrywide assault. Many veterans, battle-hardened after years in the trenches, rejoined the army.

“This was decisive,” said Captain Voitsekhovsky, referring to the way veterans of the war in the east took up arms against the full-scale Russian invasion. “First, we were motivated. This was a big, unpleasant surprise for the Russians. And we had combat experience. Nothing had to be explained. We took weapons and needed no help.”

The Maidan uprising echoed in Russia’s war plans, too.

In the invasion, Russia sought to quickly capture the capital with columns of tanks, paratroopers and commandos, with the goal of setting up a puppet government. One plan identified by Ukrainian officials would have reinstalled Mr. Yanukovych.

President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s compound outside Kyiv. After the Maidan uprising, Mr. Yanukovych fled to eastern Ukraine, and then to Russia on Feb. 24, 2014.

In the weeks before the invasion, lawyers who later fled to Russia filed little-noticed lawsuits in a Kyiv court contesting a Parliamentary vote in 2014 that stripped Mr. Yanukovych of his presidential powers.

The legal filings would have lain the groundwork for his return. Agents with Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., confiscated the court’s computer servers, lest corrupt or treasonous judges publish a ruling legitimizing Mr. Yanukovych’s return.

Over the years, Russia’s denials of any direct military role in Ukraine in 2014 infuriated Ukrainians, and has amplified their view of a long war against Russia.

France and Germany had conceded, in settlement talks, to a role for Russian proxy forces in negotiations known as the Minsk II process. It was, in essence, a partial acceptance of the Russian denial of having invaded two eastern provinces in 2014; that acceptance delayed for years a full grappling with the implications of Russia’s turn to military expansionism.

“I wanted somebody to pay attention to this lawlessness,” Captain Fedash, the navy skipper, said of Russia’s unacknowledged intervention. “We let time go by. They were not punished, so they continued.”

Ukraine is now on the defensive along the entire 600-mile front, is fighting with dwindling ammunition and faces deep uncertainty over the future of military and financial aid from its most important ally, the United States. Ukrainians have fought against long odds before.

Sviatoslav Syry, who was beaten by riot police officers as a student protester on the square, was elected to a seat in Parliament and is now fighting in an artillery unit in the Ukrainian military.

Maidan protesters, he told Ukrainian media, were dismayed as riot police repeatedly stormed the tent encampment on the square in nighttime raids. “By morning, you think maybe it’s all over,” he said. “But inside, there’s already this anger and desire to come back.”

A memorial set up in the aftermath of the uprising in 2014. Russia’s denials of any direct military role in Ukraine in 2014 has infuriated Ukrainians and amplified their view of a long war against Russia.

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

If this is accurate then it indicates that this was likely not the Patriot. 
 

Hard to speculate on what it may have been. 

[Chad Fuck 17,758]

1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

If this is accurate then it indicates that this was likely not the Patriot. 
 

Hard to speculate on what it may have been. 

All I know for sure is that's a long distance to reach out and touch someone. 

[dimyh 1,874]

37 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

If this is accurate then it indicates that this was likely not the Patriot. 
 

Hard to speculate on what it may have been. 

Maybe Russia just really likes shooting itself in its tiny pee pee. Either way this is awesome news because replacing those cannot be easy.

[dimyh 1,874]

A long but interesting article measuring some of Europe's attitudes about the war and how to maintain support. No doubt enthusiam is waning but the authors are pointing out that a peace is not a permanent end to this conflict.

 

TLDR

"The best way to mitigate against war fatigue will be to define this idea of ‘durable peace’. Russian victory is not peace. And if the price of ending the war is turning Ukraine into a no man’s land, it will be a defeat not only for Kyiv but for Europe as a whole. In the event of negotiations, it is essential for both Ukrainian and Western publics to know what is on the table and what is not. What is not negotiable is Ukraine’s democratic and pro-Western future."

 

https://ecfr.eu/publication/wars-and-elections-how-european-leaders-can-maintain-public-support-for-ukraine/#european-perceptions-of-the-war-in-ukraine

 

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

I really wish we could've somehow preserved the "What's happening in Ukraine" thread from 10 years ago when this all started. 

@blacklab Is that all gone forever? There was so much great stuff in that thread.

For Many Ukrainians, It’s Been a 10-Year War, Not a 2-Year One

They were a ragtag army, fighting with baseball bats, Molotov cocktails and plywood shields. But for Ukrainians, the protesters who faced off with riot police on Kyiv’s main square a decade ago were the first soldiers in a war still raging today.

The demonstrators were part of the Maidan uprising of 2014, when Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the decision by President Viktor F. Yanukovych to forgo closer ties to Europe and instead more closely align Ukraine with Moscow. In the uprising’s violent, final days police killed more than 100 protesters.

Their portraits now adorn a wall of honor at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv. They are displayed first, ahead of portraits of soldiers killed in the simmering, eight-year conflict in Ukraine’s east that served as a prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. And a museum dedicated to the street uprising identifies those who died on the square as the first soldiers killed in the war with Russia.

This connection Ukrainians make between the 2014 rebellion and the invasion two years ago reflects the long view of war that many citizens hold: They’ve been fighting Russia for 10 years, not two.

Portraits of people killed in the Maidan uprising are displayed inside St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came in two phases, Ukrainians point out. The first was a decade ago when Russian soldiers came over the border soon after Mr. Yanukovych was driven into exile, igniting the war in the east. It was a military intervention unacknowledged by Moscow, shrouded in a fog of ruses and denials so improbable that few were deceived. But it nonetheless served to blunt both the Ukrainian and international response.

The war pivoted two years ago to an unveiled effort by Russia to seize territory militarily and redraw European borders. This week, as the world observes the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians recall the anger and resolve that drove the 2014 uprising as well.

“We have always been fighting Russia,” said Capt. Oleh Voitsekhovsky, who joined the army directly after protesting on Maidan Square, fought in the war in the east and is still fighting today. His view of Ukrainian history, he said, is of a continual struggle against Moscow. “It is just sometimes cold and sometimes hot.”

In its final days, the 2014 uprising nearly collapsed as protesters held only a few hundred square yards of soot-smeared paving stones and had resorted to burning heaps of tires to keep alight a giant bonfire that was holding back riot police.

Police snipers fired into the crowds, leaving bodies scattered on the pavement in central Kyiv. The protest ended with security service chiefs and protest leaders cutting a deal, and with the police pulling back and leaving the capital. This betrayal left Mr. Yanukovych without protection, and he fled to eastern Ukraine, and then to Russia on Feb. 24, 2014.

During the Maidan uprising, police snipers fired into the crowds, leaving bodies scattered on the pavement in central Kyiv.

In a video address to the nation on Tuesday in observance of the 10th anniversary of the sniper shootings, President Volodymyr Zelensky drew a line from the Maidan uprising to the trench warfare today. Ukrainians will fight, he said, “in the squares, on the barricades and today at the front.”

After driving out Mr. Yanukovych, many protesters believed they had secured Ukraine’s freedom. In fact, the war had just begun.

Russia’s response to Maidan became a simple but effective trick: It deployed soldiers in uniforms without insignia in the Crimea Peninsula and identified them as angry locals or members of motorcycle gangs. The ruse was transparent, but it succeeded in slowing the Western response amid discussions of the origins of the ostensible mystery soldiers.

Ukraine, still wobbly under an interim president appointed by Parliament, initially sought to avoid a war.

Capt. Yuriy Fedash of the Ukrainian navy was trying to rebuff Russian efforts to board and seize his ship in March 2014 when he received an order from Kyiv emblematic of Ukraine’s cautious, first response: “‘Don’t give up but don’t shoot,’” Captain Fedash said he was told.

Russia deployed soldiers in unmarked uniforms in the Crimea Peninsula and identified them as angry locals or members of motorcycle gangs, helping to slow a Western response.

Seeing no way to resist without fighting, Captain Fedash disobeyed, he said in an interview: He ordered sailors to fire warning shots from a heavy machine gun, sending up sprays of seawater. They were among the first shots fired by Ukraine’s military in the war but did not prevent the eventual seizure of the ship.

By the time Russian tanks rolled across the border two years ago, roughly 400,000 Ukrainians had already fought the Russians in eastern Ukraine. By sustaining years of low-intensity war in the east, Russia, paradoxically, had prepared the Ukrainian army to rebuff a countrywide assault. Many veterans, battle-hardened after years in the trenches, rejoined the army.

“This was decisive,” said Captain Voitsekhovsky, referring to the way veterans of the war in the east took up arms against the full-scale Russian invasion. “First, we were motivated. This was a big, unpleasant surprise for the Russians. And we had combat experience. Nothing had to be explained. We took weapons and needed no help.”

The Maidan uprising echoed in Russia’s war plans, too.

In the invasion, Russia sought to quickly capture the capital with columns of tanks, paratroopers and commandos, with the goal of setting up a puppet government. One plan identified by Ukrainian officials would have reinstalled Mr. Yanukovych.

President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s compound outside Kyiv. After the Maidan uprising, Mr. Yanukovych fled to eastern Ukraine, and then to Russia on Feb. 24, 2014.

In the weeks before the invasion, lawyers who later fled to Russia filed little-noticed lawsuits in a Kyiv court contesting a Parliamentary vote in 2014 that stripped Mr. Yanukovych of his presidential powers.

The legal filings would have lain the groundwork for his return. Agents with Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., confiscated the court’s computer servers, lest corrupt or treasonous judges publish a ruling legitimizing Mr. Yanukovych’s return.

Over the years, Russia’s denials of any direct military role in Ukraine in 2014 infuriated Ukrainians, and has amplified their view of a long war against Russia.

France and Germany had conceded, in settlement talks, to a role for Russian proxy forces in negotiations known as the Minsk II process. It was, in essence, a partial acceptance of the Russian denial of having invaded two eastern provinces in 2014; that acceptance delayed for years a full grappling with the implications of Russia’s turn to military expansionism.

“I wanted somebody to pay attention to this lawlessness,” Captain Fedash, the navy skipper, said of Russia’s unacknowledged intervention. “We let time go by. They were not punished, so they continued.”

Ukraine is now on the defensive along the entire 600-mile front, is fighting with dwindling ammunition and faces deep uncertainty over the future of military and financial aid from its most important ally, the United States. Ukrainians have fought against long odds before.

Sviatoslav Syry, who was beaten by riot police officers as a student protester on the square, was elected to a seat in Parliament and is now fighting in an artillery unit in the Ukrainian military.

Maidan protesters, he told Ukrainian media, were dismayed as riot police repeatedly stormed the tent encampment on the square in nighttime raids. “By morning, you think maybe it’s all over,” he said. “But inside, there’s already this anger and desire to come back.”

A memorial set up in the aftermath of the uprising in 2014. Russia’s denials of any direct military role in Ukraine in 2014 has infuriated Ukrainians and amplified their view of a long war against Russia.

We had lots of people, including some that very much knew better, willing to pretend that Russia didn’t invade Ukraine and the East in 2014.  That it was an “annexation” and a “civil war or ‘conflict’”. 

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

Enjoy watching this A-50 get fucked up with color commentary. 
 

 

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

Keep in mind also that these crews are in really specialized billets and that Russia’s training infrastructure is shit.  One of the few areas where “meat” isn’t an answer.

They are going to have a hard time with airframes but the institutional knowledge loss is maybe worse.  This happened to the Luftwaffe and IJA/N, pilots were more valuable than the planes. 

[Chad Fuck 17,758]

8 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Enjoy watching this A-50 get fucked up with color commentary. 
 

 

They shot their own high value plane down.  

[bolverk 29,717]

Coming soon.

74,682 views  Feb 23, 2024
In July 2023, Ukraine and several other countries formed a so-called F-16 coalition. The coalition is led by the United States, Denmark, and the Netherlands. 

The coalition is working on the transfer of aircraft, training of pilots and maintenance personnel, and preparation of infrastructure. United24 Media travelled to Denmark to meet the Ukrainian pilots who were selected for this great responsibility, and to see how training on the worlds most popular fighter jet is going.

 

[F250 28,817]

25 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Coming soon.

74,682 views  Feb 23, 2024
In July 2023, Ukraine and several other countries formed a so-called F-16 coalition. The coalition is led by the United States, Denmark, and the Netherlands. 

The coalition is working on the transfer of aircraft, training of pilots and maintenance personnel, and preparation of infrastructure. United24 Media travelled to Denmark to meet the Ukrainian pilots who were selected for this great responsibility, and to see how training on the worlds most popular fighter jet is going.

 

 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21,921]

Sorry, but Top Gun was F-14s, you need a gif from Iron Eagle

[956 Worldwide 34,758]

In addition to the A-50, also reports of another downed Su-34 near Kherson.  And again—crew loss is just as harmful as the aircraft if not more so. Even qualified and experienced RU aviators get a lot less seat time than US and high-capacity NATO counterparts.
 

 

Edited February 23 by 956 Worldwide

[DaggerHorns 3,085]

24 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Sorry, but Top Gun was F-14s, you need a gif from Iron Eagle

Take that shit to Movies & TV if you wanna reference Movies!!!!!

 

 

/sarcasm

[DDD Dad 14,348]

2 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

If this is accurate then it indicates that this was likely not the Patriot. 
 

Hard to speculate on what it may have been. 

 

[Pescado_Rojo 19,428]

Something is going on over there. They've been shooting down a lot of RU aircraft at what I would consider extreme range. Either they've made some kind of intelligence or technological breakthrough, or there's something new in theater that no one knows about. 

[Captainant 27,762]

Just now, Pescado_Rojo said:

Something is going on over there. They've been shooting down a lot of RU aircraft at what I would consider extreme range. Either they've made some kind of intelligence or technological breakthrough, or there's something new in theater that no one knows about. 

Or applying Hanlon's Razor: russia has a really REALLY shit military?

[Pescado_Rojo 19,428]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Or applying Hanlon's Razor: russia has a really REALLY shit military?

[atomheartbevo 89,788]

4 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Something is going on over there. They've been shooting down a lot of RU aircraft at what I would consider extreme range. Either they've made some kind of intelligence or technological breakthrough, or there's something new in theater that no one knows about. 

It’s definitely odd.  Russia only has one more A-50 for the Ukrainian theater.  I’ve wondered if they are flying semi-stealthy drones with air-to-air missiles.

[Pescado_Rojo 19,428]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

It’s definitely odd.  Russia only has one more A-50 for the Ukrainian theater.  I’ve wondered if they are flying semi-stealthy drones with air-to-air missiles.

kinda my thought. Maybe with AWACs support from an ally. "You should fly to this map grid and turn on your search radar for a second"

[Captainant 27,762]

That night footage of flares coming down and tricking some missiles before a big BOOM is something else. I wonder if Ukraine shot the missile or if they used some EW tricks to coax russia into a red on red situation, like spoofed IFF signals or something else to trick a junior LT ivan to fire on his own jet

 

Edit: Also reading tea leaves... degrading russias air radar is a key step in obtaining air dominance and then supremacy, which will be very handy with Ukrainian F16s

Edited February 23 by Captainant

[MissingInAction 25,179]

30 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

kinda my thought. Maybe with AWACs support from an ally. "You should fly to this map grid and turn on your search radar for a second"

This is the way.

[Parliament 14,292]

2 hours ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

kinda my thought. Maybe with AWACs support from an ally. "You should fly to this map grid and turn on your search radar for a second"

That makes me hard.