"I am very unhappy with the openly hostile policy of the USA toward my country."
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Russia’s space chief is “very unhappy” with “hostile” US policy
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Found a bit more in a Finnish news site. They kept it quiet for a while (Dec 27).
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It's probably false flag so they can retaliate with tit-for-tat actions against any inconveniences that the Baltic states impose on them for passage through their waters.
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I actually wouldn’t put it past some of the more Russophobia navies in the area to have done some black-ops work.
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With submarine Comms cable break repairs, presumably there's some added work checking that nobody took advantage of the line being broken to perform a little cut-and-splice work elsewhere on the line and add a monitoring tap?
Operation Ivy Bells is pretty well-known to all the states involved, after all.
Operation Ivy Bells is pretty well-known to all the states involved, after all.
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And minimal oversight/training for bush pilots. There’s a lot of “I often did it this way and never had a problem before” in those crashes.
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Is there any useful information that isn't encrypted in transit?
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1) Metadata
2) A lot of vulnerabilities end up requiring being man-in-the-middle.
3) Store data long enough to be able to decrypt it with quantum computers. Post-quantum algorithms aren’t being fully-utilized, yet.
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Sunday morning's missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:
- 151x Shahed aerial torpedoes & decoys (70 intercepted, 74 decoys crashed, 2 unresolved)
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Another Su-25 was reportedly shot down near Toretsk yesterday by an Igla MANPADS, and a rescue Mi-8 helicopter was damaged while attempting to rescue the pilot.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/02/8/7497319/
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Two bits of symbolism:
View: https://t.me/bazabazon/34948
View: https://t.me/astrapress/74104
- among protests in Serbia the wheels are coming off for Vučić
- the Chinese Shadow Fleet made a landing in the Russian Far East
View: https://t.me/bazabazon/34948
View: https://t.me/astrapress/74104
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Another one: an oil tanker is booming and sinking near Saint Petersburg
The tanker with 130 000 tons of fuel oil sinks in the port in the Leningrad region. According to sources, several explosions occurred in the engine department of the tanker, after which the ship began to fill with water.
According to the "Base", on the night of February 9, the tanker "Koala" (he walks under the flag of Antigua and Barbud) was at the third pier in the seaport in Ust-Luga. On board the tanker was a crew of 24 people (each of them are Russians, eight citizens of Georgia and 12 - Indonesia).
To two o'm the night, about 130 000 tons of fuel oil were loaded on board the tanker. The ship was already preparing to sail when three powerful explosions thundered in the engine room. The crew managed to get ashore, but the engine compartment of the vessel began to be flooded with water.
To be taken to 5 a.m., it became clear that the ship had a stern ran aground. Employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations installed bon fences around the ship. At the same time, according to preliminary data, there was no leakage of petroleum products into the water. As a result of the incident, no one was injured.
UPThe governor of the Leningrad region Drozdenko said that "on the tanker "Koala" there was a technogenic incident during the start of the engine, which damaged the engine room.
According to Drozdenko, the tanker is docked at the pier. The crew was evacuated, there were no casualties, there is no threat of oil spills. The cause of the incident is currently being investigated.
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Should probably construct an oil fence between Finland and Estonia, just to be sure. I wonder how much 65km worth of flood bags costs.
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...now I'm wondering what UNCLOS has to say about building a dam all the way across a strait, Atlantropa-style
(I'm ignoring the logistical challenges, obviously)
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Also there's this "thought experiment".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_European_Enclosure_Dam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_European_Enclosure_Dam
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The Baltic is a place where the logistics are less challenging than the geopoliticas.
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Monday morning'd missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:
- 83x Shahed aerial torpedoes & decoys (61 intercepted, 22 decoys crashed, damage caused)
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Ukraine struck an underground Russian command post of the 35th Motorized Rifle Brigade in Selydove, Donetsk oblast. Ukrainian sources mention that the bunker was busted by a HIMARS strike, while OSINTtechnical says this might be the first documented use of a GBU-61 or GBU-62 glide bomb in Ukraine (same video footage in both sources).
BTW the video is supposedly recorded from Ukrainian-made 'Shark' recon UAV which is piloted by one of three female operators assigned to this UAV unit.
BTW the video is supposedly recorded from Ukrainian-made 'Shark' recon UAV which is piloted by one of three female operators assigned to this UAV unit.
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Kaliningrad has one coal and three gas power plants, with a combined nameplate capacity that's about double their peak demand. The coal plant is intended to be a backup for when a gas plant is down, since gas is easier to get into the exclave than coal. They currently depend on gas piped through Lithuania. A gas storage facility and a tanker were bought to ensure they can continue receiving gas if something were to happen to the pipeline, but estimates are that shipping it in by tanker would quadruple the price compared to piping it.
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So Lithuania has been so kind to keep transporting gas to Kaliningrad, while at the same time being very vocally anti Russia. I wonder why
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The contract to allow gas transit expires in December of this year.
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Yeah, I’m fairly certain that the largest miscalculation was how few Ukrainian units had given up. If the invasion in the north had proceeded like the invasion in the south, Russian troops would have been in Kyiv in three days.
That said, the article does indicate just how close Ukraine came to fall. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia had minimal resistance, with my suspicion being that this was largely due to local Russian sympathies in both civilian and military areas. I think the Russian miscalculation lay largely in how well they had penetrated the entirety of the Ukrainian government. Also, I think few people understood that Zelenskyy would fight that hard. If Zelenskyy would have taken up the offered ride, I believe the war would have gone quite differently. Not a total collapse, but I do think that the front line would look different.
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A write-up of the recent all drone assault:
https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault
No really ground-breaking new details, but it definitely hints at upcoming improvements. They needed about 100 people to coordinate 30 drones. Any sort of swarm software will dramatically reduce that manpower requirement. Ground drones still got stuck in the mud. UAVs definitely have an advantage there, and UGVs need to be further tweaked on that front.
https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault
No really ground-breaking new details, but it definitely hints at upcoming improvements. They needed about 100 people to coordinate 30 drones. Any sort of swarm software will dramatically reduce that manpower requirement. Ground drones still got stuck in the mud. UAVs definitely have an advantage there, and UGVs need to be further tweaked on that front.
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Sometimes high risk plays don't pay off, and if a bunch of them go bad, you end up looking like an idiot. Russia Contingency at War on the Rocks had a retrospective on the first months of the war last year including details that were initially kept quiet, but it was a damn close run thing if a few things had broken different - like if Ukrainian air defense units hadn't started moving out right at the last minute, but had delayed by even a day, or I guess, had moved early enough for their new locations to be noted by the Russians. Or if some units hadn't fought quite as stubbornly or if Ukrainian intelligence had less of a handle on infiltrators.
A string of luck isn't manifest destiny, and the actual results can greatly colour the perception of events that may have/were expected to play out differently at the time. Desert Storm was a walkover, but initial projected US casualties were way, way (as in orders of magnitude) higher and the actual results were a surprise to everyone and retroactively changes the perception of say, Iraqi forces compared to how they were regarded, even by professionals, in 1989/1990.
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Something odd is happening at the front. Russian casualties are dropping, but unlike during earlier drops that looked like Russian rotations and regeneration pauses, this one comes with an increase in equipment losses.
https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0...-de8eb98c8f3a/page/p_c5qlea6e4c?s=ry-bX2eFilo
Just eyeballing losses from the past 6 months, there's a definite pattern to them: about a week of high-intensity losses across both soldiers and equipment, followed by about 10 days of lowered losses. While the intensity and duration of the peaks and troughs vary, there has not been a single instance where equipment losses went so dramatically in the opposite direction of casualty numbers.
Combine that with reports of recent Ukrainian advances, and there are a couple of potential scenarios I can see driving this:
On that last topic... nets, nets, nets everywhere!
https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_an...tire_anti_drone_tunnels_in_ukraine-13487.html
So when will we see some of our other ridiculous ideas implemented, like drones equipped with giant net cutters? I'm still hoping to see anti-drone air balloons going up somewhere.
https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0...-de8eb98c8f3a/page/p_c5qlea6e4c?s=ry-bX2eFilo
Just eyeballing losses from the past 6 months, there's a definite pattern to them: about a week of high-intensity losses across both soldiers and equipment, followed by about 10 days of lowered losses. While the intensity and duration of the peaks and troughs vary, there has not been a single instance where equipment losses went so dramatically in the opposite direction of casualty numbers.
Combine that with reports of recent Ukrainian advances, and there are a couple of potential scenarios I can see driving this:
- The Ukrainian advances were able to hit vehicle storage areas, skewing the loss ratios.
- Meat wave assaults are being deprioritized for more mechanized assaults.
- Ukrainian reporting is starting to count things they didn't before: scooters, Ladas, donkeys, etc.
- Overall Russian push is slowing down and Ukrainian targeting of rear logistics routes has improved.
On that last topic... nets, nets, nets everywhere!
https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_an...tire_anti_drone_tunnels_in_ukraine-13487.html
So when will we see some of our other ridiculous ideas implemented, like drones equipped with giant net cutters? I'm still hoping to see anti-drone air balloons going up somewhere.
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Another example, and one of my favorites on that front: Warriors/Cavaliers NBA finals in 2016. The entire series came down to the last minute of the 7th game, where Irving made a three-pointer and Curry missed. Because of those two shots, the Warriors' 2015-2016 team went from greatest of all time to "pretty good, but they lost the finals".
It still just boggles my mind how the entire narrative about the Warriors shifted because of those two shots. It kinda opened my eyes to the problem you mention.
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During the 2022 Ukrainian offensive, they drove past a bunch of equipment they hadn't counted before, mostly because it looked functional but had actually broken down. Maybe something similar is happening in Kursk?
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Unarmoured equipment losses are still rising. But tank numbers started declining about a year ago such they are now running at about 60% of their peak rate. AFVs levelled out at about the same time and might be just now tipping over into decline as well.
While, as you say, something is happening, it's difficult to say exactly what. I think it's reasonable to say that a large part of the increases in unarmoured vehicles is due to them replacing the armoured vehicles. You can even see a slight dogleg up in unarmoured vehicle losses at exactly the same time that armoured classes started to level or fall.
But why fewer Tanks and AFVs? It could be that the Russians are running out. Or equally it could be that the Russians are running better tactics (Ha!). Or it could be them taking more defensive positions in places like Kursk and Pokrovsk where Ukraine seems to be taking some ground at the moment. Or something else.
I posted this chart a few days ago, but this adds unarmoured vehicles. Note it is rolling averages, because it's just too noisy to read with plain monthly data. The Feb 25 value is my projection.
BTW, Ru should pass 10,000 tanks lost today. They passed 20,000 AFVs & Artillery pieces a couple of months ago.
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Yep. 10.001 today, and Russian casualties broke 850k as well, although Zelensky said a few days ago that the official number was about 200 k too low.Unarmoured equipment losses are still rising. But tank numbers started declining about a year ago such they are now running at about 60% of their peak rate. AFVs levelled out at about the same time and might be just now tipping over into decline as well.
While, as you say, something is happening, it's difficult to say exactly what. I think it's reasonable to say that a large part of the increases in unarmoured vehicles is due to them replacing the armoured vehicles. You can even see a slight dogleg up in unarmoured vehicle losses at exactly the same time that armoured classes started to level or fall.
But why fewer Tanks and AFVs? It could be that the Russians are running out. Or equally it could be that the Russians are running better tactics (Ha!). Or it could be them taking more defensive positions in places like Kursk and Pokrovsk where Ukraine seems to be taking some ground at the moment. Or something else.
I posted this chart a few days ago, but this adds unarmoured vehicles. Note it is rolling averages, because it's just too noisy to read with plain monthly data. The Feb 25 value is my projection.
View attachment 102304
BTW, Ru should pass 10,000 tanks lost today. They passed 20,000 AFVs & Artillery pieces a couple of months ago.
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HIMARS wouldn’t make sense as a bunker-buster. It’s designed to defeat a surface target.
GBU-61 is an anti-mine system, and GBU-62 is a mine-laying bomb.
They are probably just mistaken designations. I don’t know what the official designation would be, but they are almost certainly referring to JDAM-ER glide kits attached to BLU-109 (2,000 lb bunker-buster) or BLU-110 (1,000 lb thermal-Insensitive explosive) dumb bombs. Maybe those would be called GBU-31/32 with some suffix for having ER kits attached?
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(Quoting myself) Further to this, on the increase in unarmoured is replacing armoured theory. If you chart All Vehicles (Tanks + AFVs + Unarmoured) lost with Personnel lost, you get an almost perfect alignment since July 23. Crude, but surprising nonetheless.
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It looks like the guided bomb unit designation system has taken a bit of a beating - GBU-62 appears to now mean any sort of bomb (possibly 500lb) fitted with a JDAM-ER kit.
GBU-61 is even more confusing, because that's the designation for an anti-minefield cluster bomb
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Western analysts and governments acted like they expected the collapse of Ukraine followed by a bloody insurrection, and were quite surprised that at least the collapse didn't happen.
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Even that article you linked to expressed confusion about the -62 designation. The one existing example is a 2,000 lb warhead, though. The 500 lb ER is often just called “JDAM-ER”, which completely fails to provide any enlightenment to the question.
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