Russian build up along Ukraine

Send the god dam weapons

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/irish-soldiers-idle-anti-tank-missiles-should-be-sent-to-ukraine-1.4815649

I think we should sell any surplus military equipment to maybe Poland for maybe a euro. What they do with them afterwards is none of our business.

P.S. we shod be sure there is Ukraine language instructions in the boxes.

Not directly related, but in the same neighbourhood, a Romanian AF Mig-21 Lancer has gone down near the Black Sea coast of that Country and very sadly a search helicopter on the trail of the plane, a Puma, has also crashed with the loss of all 7 aboard.

No word on the pilot of the Mig.

FWIW, sodium iodide is a stable, simple salt. It only has to be kept dry, it doesn't decompose or degrade or become less effective. But everything that is "food" or "medicine" has to have an expiry date. I'm surprised bricks don't have expiry dates on them these days...

I stopped reading there.

No it isn't. Map as of 2100Z last night:

I'm not sure what our DF upgrade has to do with your initial point Ancient mariner.

It was already on the cards anyway due to a change in the prevailing winds of geopolitics, and out of the consequent CoD report, but obviously the Russian military assault on a sovereign State has thrown a spotlight on the need to be able to at least mind our own patch of grass and water adequately.

In Slovakia it is now compulsory that they take the people into their home

Question 2

Let's say the Russians stop their advancements and instead just park up their artillery inside the Russian/Crimean/Belarus/DNR/LNR borders, surround them with anti-aircraft capabilities and flatten Ukrainian cities from afar - and then send in troops to take over when the cities are rubble. What are the downsides of that (apart from the terrible optics of massacring civilians)?

Could the Ukrainians realistically counter that strategy in any way?

Mobile artillery won't flatten cities. At least it won't without it taking years and years.

When various cities in Germany were flattened (really flattened) in WWII, it took months of high level carpet bombing, often using incendiary bombs by allied air forces, ahead of advancing ground armies. A combination of old style building materials and close proximity of structures resulted in great fire storms that hollowed out cities which then fell into rubble.

For the Russians to achieve something similar, they would have to deploy conventional cruise and ballistic missiles, like the Iskander system, on a wide scale, as well as its indiscriminate thermobaric rocket launchers.

They would likely have to also launch an indiscriminate air campaign against Ukrainian cities, using ordinary gravity bombs from their Backfire, Bear and Blackjack bombers.

All of this, would represent a major escalation in military activity and a major departure from Russia's original plan and no doubt cause major tension among the upper echelons of the military and political apparatus in Moscow.

It could, of course, be countered by the increased supply of Western defensive weapons systems to Ukraine, such as Patriot and THAAD and the already very successful short-range Stinger.

Even if the Russian armour does eventually get into position to attempt to lay siege to big cities, such as Kyiv, it seems that again, the Western supplied anti armour missiles, especially Javelin, are highly effective against them and could be employed from either side of the siege line.

Overall it seems that all this heralded Russian equipment is mostly crap, Russian soldiers are mostly unmotivated and unsuitably trained and Russian logistics and campaign planning took place in the local Kindergarten.

As time goes on, I'd be more confident of the domestic Ukrainian population, including some 10 million men highly motivated of fighting age, backed by excellent real time intelligence from the West, as well as state of the art weapons, being able to upset and derail each Russian plan as it develops and I hope they get every plane, missile and rifle that they can handle.

More in hope than expectation friend. Have to be optimistic for them.

There is a saying by mechanics in the agriculture industry that the best thing adiesel engine like is work. its very hard to do preventive maintenace on equipment. You eally need it to be working day in day out. the day you find a problem with a machine is the day you go to use it. working

We'll probably never know that one, at least until somebody writes the book on the War after the fact.

You would imagine though, that the further the MiGs are from the systems configuration the Ukrainian pilots are familiar with, the longer the lead time for effective deployment will be.

It's also pretty risky, if one of those with the western upgrades, gets downed in Russian held territory and analysed by them.

I'd be very, very surprised if that was the case

Again, if one were captured, it would be used as just the sort of excuse Russia is seeking to widen the War.

Besides, it seems that there is little shortage of experienced pilots who are serving or have recently served with the UAF, whose staff exceeds 40,000. We're only talking about 23 Polish MiGs, or less. The Ukrainian lads will probably be fighting each other off for a chance to fly one of them into combat.