"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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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Feel free to ignore this wildly off topic comment, I just needed to say this but didn't want to say it directly in the relevant thread:
What kind of pathetic and disgusting ideology must one have to assume that one's objection to a cancellation of vaccine subsidies is motivated purely by personal finances.
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Friday morning's missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:
- 112x Shahed aerial torpedoes & decoys (81 intercepted, 31 decoys crashed, damage caused)
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Apparently, Russia are erecting additional defensive positions along highways and road in northern Crimea
The big question is "Why?" - are they worried about Ukraine somehow managing a successful cross-Dnipro offensive? Preparing for having to hand back the land south of the Dnipro in a ceasefire agreement? Want somewhere relatively safe to station politically-connected draftees?
@CrimeaUA1 via DeepL Translate said:
The big question is "Why?" - are they worried about Ukraine somehow managing a successful cross-Dnipro offensive? Preparing for having to hand back the land south of the Dnipro in a ceasefire agreement? Want somewhere relatively safe to station politically-connected draftees?
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Or just a nice fat contract for building these in a relatively safe environment in order to please a contractor..
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You need a contract worth more than the price of a dacha to skim off enough money to build your dacha. The bigger the contract, the more money you can skim off without being caught.
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Speculation: Russia may have tried to launch a Spudnik Oreshnik missile at Kyiv on Thursday, but the missile reportedly didn't quite make it to Ukraine. However, the article update states that there's no actual confirmation of the attempted launch or failure.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...this-one-reportedly-exploded-on-russian-soil/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...this-one-reportedly-exploded-on-russian-soil/
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Someone at the DoD's deconfliction hotline should know, they knew about the first launch. Unfortunately, they're not allowed to tell...
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well i mean I'm sure those areas are still getting hit by Ukrainian munitions.
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Well I did say "foolish"! Illogical emotional reactions can be strong and hard to shift.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn93797z2dpo
"Later, he added: "I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of the grand ambitions for humankind being a multi-planet species…"
I agree that he'll probably try to defend NASA's other functions. But that depends on trump and musk.
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Odd then to be working for an administration whose plans are very much in the "not even a single planet species" mold.
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"rocket-boosted GPS-guided glide bombs"?
It's a cruise missile.
Sure, it started as a bomb, but once you have slapped on the navigation, wings and propulsion - it's a cruise missile.
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Zero technical benefit.
Refilling the aquifer made the practice of drinking treated wastewater politically/publicly acceptable.
Now that they've had ~40 years getting used to the idea, El Paso is building that new purification plant to skip the aquifer step.
"Flint 2.0" appears to be pharmaceuticals and PFAS.
My Mom's water supply is contaminated with PFAS above the action level. Since it's a new rule, the water company gets 3 years to correct it.
In the meantime, we've been clear that she needs to be drinking/cooking with filtered water.
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It's not sustained propulsion, just a rocket adding K into the equivalent of U, as if it had been launched from higher. As soon as the few seconds of propulsion end, it's quasi-ballistic
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It's a boost-glide missile, in the same manner as GLSDB. It has no sustainer motor.
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Depends on how strict you want to be with the term. Anything ground launched is going to come with a rocket motor to get it airborne. Meteor is rocket-adjacent during cruise, and there are a number of other shorter range missiles with "dual-thrust" motors that operate as a sustainer.
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Yes - the big Russian supersonic anti-ship missiles like the Kh-22/-32 for example
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Doesn't Ukraine have a ground launched cruise missile that uses a short stretch of pavement as a runway?
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Baltics leaving Russian electrical grid - making Kaliningrad an isolated power island.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/baltics-brace-cut-decades-old-ties-russian-grid-2025-02-07/
I wonder how much they were paying for power? However much it was, they won't be paying it anymore.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/baltics-brace-cut-decades-old-ties-russian-grid-2025-02-07/
I wonder how much they were paying for power? However much it was, they won't be paying it anymore.
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How many power plants does Kaliningrad have? Things might get awkward around maintenance time if they only have a couple of units...
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They could just run an undersea cable from St. Petersburg. I hear those are very reliable.
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rumor has it someone has spent too much time hoging the spotlight and the orange one isn't happy.
im impressed, i was betting on 6 months,
im impressed, i was betting on 6 months,
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It’s just a matter of time even if this rumor isn’t true.
My bet was 90 days or less.
Two malignant narcissists will turn on each other sooner than later.
Trump could Gitmo Elmer and there’s nothing Elmer could do about it.
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they'd last longer if they weren't flooding the lane, but because they are, and the backlash, well...
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Saturday morning's missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:
Also, the new Kursk offensive is official
I'm guessing the main value in this push is making Ukraine look strong and Russia look weak in the run-up to the Trump-Putin meeting, rather than actually capturing territory
- 139x Shahed aerial torpedoes & decoys (67 intercepted, 71 decoys crashed, damage caused)
Also, the new Kursk offensive is official
DeepL Translate said:
I'm guessing the main value in this push is making Ukraine look strong and Russia look weak in the run-up to the Trump-Putin meeting, rather than actually capturing territory
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Is this new? I thought they fortified those areas back in early 2023 before the vaunted Ukrainian offensive.
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As someone else mentioned above, I'm sure that someone's Dacha needs a new roof, and therefore the Russian trench system in the area needs an upgrade. Or someone just wants to show his superiors that he's doing stuff, and shouldn't be sent to the front line. Either way, it's likely that it is happening, but probably not indicative of some change in military position.
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Russian war correspondent channels are talking not only about the recent Ukrainian push in Kursk oblast, but also about counterattacks near Pokrovsk, where the Russian salient south and southwest of the city is being attacked from three directions in an attempt to cut off and encircle the westernmost parts. Heavy artillery, FPV drones and mechanized assaults are mentioned, along with lack of defensive preparation on the Russian side.
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Some summaries of the initial launch of the Russian invasion and the current state of affairs.
Initial invasion wasn't a miscalculation, but a standard Soviet/Russian invasion based on the strategic force multiplier of surprise and speed.
https://www.stratagem.no/the-kremli...nderestimate-the-ukrainians-in-february-2022/
They have some interesting implications about this would therefore not be a landgrab, but I disagree: in all the examples they mentioned, the goal was to either preserve their geopolitical influence, do a landgrab, or create geopolitical influence. Also, I do think there was a miscalculation: they overestimated the depths of their influence on the Ukrainian military and overestimated the speed at which they could capture key points. The battle at the Hostomel airport was likely a key turning point in Ukraine's fortunes.
Current state of the front line:
https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/frontline-dynamics-2025-key-updates
I thought I had posted this before, but it doesn't look like it. I think it may have been something similar by someone else a bit earlier. TLDR: tough times in key directions that are now mostly due to lack of Ukrainian infantry. Firepower advantages no longer to the sole benefit of Russian forces. North Korean forces probably on rotation, and are thought to return in the near future.
6-months review of Kursk offensive:
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine’s-kursk-incursion-six-month-assessment
TLDR: hard to say what the ultimate benefit of the Kursk offensive is, but at a minimum, it forced Russia to deploy its best troops inside Russia, not outside, and spoiled further planned Russians incursions in the Ukrainian lands bordering it.
Hard to understate how important it is to have Russia bomb its own land, rather than Ukrainian land.
Initial invasion wasn't a miscalculation, but a standard Soviet/Russian invasion based on the strategic force multiplier of surprise and speed.
https://www.stratagem.no/the-kremli...nderestimate-the-ukrainians-in-february-2022/
They have some interesting implications about this would therefore not be a landgrab, but I disagree: in all the examples they mentioned, the goal was to either preserve their geopolitical influence, do a landgrab, or create geopolitical influence. Also, I do think there was a miscalculation: they overestimated the depths of their influence on the Ukrainian military and overestimated the speed at which they could capture key points. The battle at the Hostomel airport was likely a key turning point in Ukraine's fortunes.
Current state of the front line:
https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/frontline-dynamics-2025-key-updates
I thought I had posted this before, but it doesn't look like it. I think it may have been something similar by someone else a bit earlier. TLDR: tough times in key directions that are now mostly due to lack of Ukrainian infantry. Firepower advantages no longer to the sole benefit of Russian forces. North Korean forces probably on rotation, and are thought to return in the near future.
6-months review of Kursk offensive:
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine’s-kursk-incursion-six-month-assessment
TLDR: hard to say what the ultimate benefit of the Kursk offensive is, but at a minimum, it forced Russia to deploy its best troops inside Russia, not outside, and spoiled further planned Russians incursions in the Ukrainian lands bordering it.
Hard to understate how important it is to have Russia bomb its own land, rather than Ukrainian land.
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I guess the claim is that they made a calculated decision but man are they bad at math?
On reading more, I can sort of see their point. I don’t agree with it exactly, but basically the argument is that the invasion plan had succeeded many times in the past so why not this time?
Where this falls over in my mind is that invading Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the various other cases is a vastly different ratio of forces than Ukraine in 2022. Ukraine is much larger than Czechoslovakia, much less isolated from the U.S. and Western Europe, whereas Russia is much smaller than USSR + the rest of the Warsaw Pact.
Failure to understand that the fast light assault strategy demands there being a deep reserve to get the defenders to give up is, itself, a significant miscalculation.
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well I mean they were bombing their own land already, just not intentionally
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As much as we like to laugh about Russian aviation, US aviation is having a heck of a time right now too. Three relatively large crashes so far this year. Losing a bush pilot here and there is normal, but aircraft with half a dozen or more passengers don’t usually go down.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/08/alaska-plane-crash-recovery
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/08/alaska-plane-crash-recovery
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Once a month is roughly the observed rate:
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/avi...ka-fatal-plane-crashes-tops-national-average/
Hardly surprising given the distances, mountainous terrain, and often extreme weather.
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That probably is a consideration; especially if the report elsewhere about a counter attack near Pokrovsk is also true. But the last Russian counter attack almost got into Sudzha before being pushed back. Losing that town would have collapsed Ukraine's positions to the north and allowed Russia to regain most of the remaining salient. Shoving them back to get much needed defensive depth there is very valuable just to hold on.
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"Nothing happened. It's being fixed. We didn't need that connectivity anyway!"
I wonder if they'll be closely monitoring those repair ships for dropped anchors and other chicanery.
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