TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

WWI Tactics make a Comeback as a Ukrainian Gunner in the back of a Propeller Plane Shoots Down a Russian Drone

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The first aerial dogfights during World War I were slow, almost comical affairs. In the early years of the war, propeller-driven observation planes lacked forward-firing machine guns.

So the pilots—or, more often, the observers in the second seats—aimed their pistols or rifles at enemy planes.

More than a century later, aerial observers are still firing small arms from the back seats of propeller-driven planes.

Last week, a gunner in a 1970s-vintage Yakovlev Yak-52 training plane belonging to a Ukrainian volunteer flying club engaged a Russian Orlan drone over southern Ukraine, reportedly shooting down the $100,000 drone.

It’s not the first time the combatants in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine have revived tactics and technology from World War I. Trench warfare is back. So are “turtle tanks” and Maxim machine guns.

But the aerial gunner-versus-drone dogfight might be the most dramatic example of modern warfare devolving in the brutal conditions of the Ukraine conflict.

The apparent drone shoot-down was captured in videos shot from the ground as well as inside the two-seat Yak-52. In the videos, the 1.5-ton trainer—which cruises a little faster than 100 miles per hour—circles around the 33-pound Orlan.

Gunfire can be heard. The seemingly damaged drone descends under its automatically-deployed parachute.

Slow-flying aircraft carrying gunners are an obvious choice for engaging slow-flying unmanned aerial vehicles without spending a lot of money.

One of the very first shoot-downs of a modern drone happened this way—in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

“One innovative Serbian anti-UAV tactic was to launch a military Mi-8 Hip helicopter to fly alongside a [U.S. Army] Hunter UAV and then have the door gunner blast the UAV with his 7.62-millimeter machine gun,” JD R. Dixon, then a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, wrote in a 2000 thesis.

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From the beginning of the week from April 22 to 28, the sapper units of the State Special Transport Service discovered, removed and neutralized 4,140 explosive objects.

The territory with an area of 3430.74 hectares was demined (verified).
The most explosive objects were seized in the Kharkiv region - 2983.

In total, since the beginning of the large-scale aggression, units of the State Special Transport Service have discovered, seized and neutralized 145,574 explosive objects and demined a territory with an area of 86,149.57 hectares (verified).
Water area - 23.48 ha
Motor roads – 881.66 km
Railway tracks – 2513.83 km
Power grid lines – 468.63 km
Gas pipes - 51.87 km
The residential area is 341.12 hectares

@ukrainejournal

They hit the Harry Potter Castle in yesterday's attack.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/31873

Painted on aircraft again.

https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/31900

Two losers ought to hang out together

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trump-dumps-kari-lake/55780/

I always thought Trump was berserk.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trump-goes-berserk-3/55784/

Good morning Resisters. 52⁰ and blue skies here.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/gop-just-cant-help-itself-on-this-one/55766/

New charges for Trump?
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/turns-out-the-michigan-criminal-probe-really-is-ongoing-and-its-time-for-donald-trump-to-worry/55777/

Turtle in the driveway

Goodnight Resisters everywhere.

The official hangman at Nurenberg
https://t.me/ukrainejournal/10842

RUSSIA ‘STUCK’ IN A WAR ECONOMY?
The Analyst
There is growing concern that Putin has now leveraged so much power and control over the state and its people that oppression is now at a level there is no way for the people to get out from under it, even if they wanted to. The means of organising and disseminating information are state controlled or can be shut off without warning. The slightest complaint receives the highest level of punishment. Nobody gets far enough to create a snowball effect that becomes irresistible.
Yet official polling shows growing discontent over the war. Hard fought rights to own property and businesses are being swept away. The state nationalises any business it wants without compensation, fortunes are being taken away without due process or fairness.
But the biggest problem is the scale of the conversion to war production.
Russian manufacturing industries were never especially vast. But they were reasonably  efficient and profitable and privately owned or entwined with western partners and economies.
All of that has gone. The state has taken over. And the problem is, it has no way of easily reversing what it has done and continues to do.
Indeed the costs and difficulties of reversing it have been analysed in the west, and the warning signs are that it would be so huge a disruption and so drastic an economic shift that, even without sanctions of any kind, preventing a jolting and destructive economic downturn would be near impossible. The dangers to Putins rule would then rapidly multiply. Russians don’t want another 1990’s decade of rampant economic dislocations and poverty, yet without massive infusions of cash and a sudden resurgence in the price of Russian gas and oil sales - both of which seem unlikely in the extreme to recover their pre-war levels, there’s no way around it.
Putin faces rising inflation from an overheating war economy that still is nowhere near beating Ukraine. Defence consumes officially, 35% of the state budget but in reality is coupled to security forces expenses it’s nearly 55%. Even that is still only one quarter of the US Defence budget.
It’s one of the reasons they are so incensed by the $61 billion for Ukraine - added to what Europe provides Ukraine has a military budget around 75% of Russia’s. It’s economic odds that simply don’t play out well.  Putins biggest problem is that production is pretty much at peak. They have more shells than they can fire, (limited only by a huge reduction in artillery through losses), as many drones as they need and glide bombs in quantities that are deeply worrying.  Buy they still can’t win the war. And if they don’t and it ends in anything less than a victory or something they can pass off as one, what then? If Putin doesn’t have a resounding victory and then has to plunge the economy into recession his days are numbered.
And that says he won’t. If he doesn’t win in Ukraine he’ll find someone else to fall upon - Georgia, Kazakhstan, any of the former soviet states of the dead empire. A constant state of war means permanent stability from his viewpoint. And that doesn’t bode well   for peace anywhere within reach of Russian borders. Putin has put himself in a place he cannot escape from. It was never meant to be like this. But it is and he’s set his course. Will anyone risk stopping him inside Russia?
@ukrainejournal

https://t.me/ukrainejournal/10837

To take a photo, act fast.

https://t.me/ukrainejournal/10854

Frontline update
The situation on the front has deteriorated. In an attempt to seize the strategic initiative and break through the front line, the enemy has concentrated its main efforts in several directions, creating a significant advantage in forces and means. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, is actively attacking along the entire front line, and in some areas he is achieving tactical success.

"The most difficult situation is in the direction of Pokrovsk and Kurakhiv, where fierce fighting continues. The enemy has engaged up to four brigades in these directions, is trying to develop an offensive west of Avdiivka and Mariinka, to break through to Pokrovsk and Kurakhiv. Units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, saving lives and health of our defenders, moved to new lines west of Berdychi, Semenivka and Novomykhailivka. In general, the enemy achieved certain tactical successes in these areas, but failed to gain operational advantages. Ukrainian troops inflicted maximum losses on the enemy, both in terms of personnel and military equipment. In order to strengthen the defense in these directions, to replace the units that suffered losses, the brigades that have regained combat capability are being redeployed," Syrskyi said.

The commander-in-chief reminded that Ivanivske and Chasiv Yar remain the hottest spots in the direction of Kramatorsk. In addition, the enemy is trying to take Klishchiivka under its control and go to the border along the "Siverskyi Donets-Donbas" channel.

"The Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to improve their tactical position in the area of Synkivka (Kupiansk direction) and Serebriansky Forestry (Lyman direction)," Syrskyi emphasized.

@ukrainejournal

How the propaganda sharks of Nazi Germany met their end

Solovyov, Skabeeva, Simonyan and other Russian propagandists are guilty of the genocide of Ukrainians.

We remind you how their predecessors, accomplices of criminal regimes, were punished

Ideologists and propagandists of the Third Reich (1933 - 1945)

✔️ Joseph Goebbels, head of the propaganda department of the NSDAP, author of the recipe: “Give me the media, and I will make a herd of pigs out of any nation,” did not wait for the trial and took poison on May 1, 1945.

✔️Alfred Rosenberg, the ideologist of the NSDAP and the Fuhrer's representative for control of spiritual and ideological education, was included by the Nuremberg Tribunal in the list of major war criminals. Hanged on October 16, 1946.

✔️Julius Streicher, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer (“Stormtrooper”), ideologist of racism. According to the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal, he was found guilty of calls for genocide. Hanged on October 16, 1946.

✔️Wilhelm Weiss, editor-in-chief of the NSDAP newspaper Völkischer Beobachter (“People's Observer”) and head of the German Press Association. During the Nuremberg trials, he received 3 years in the camps with confiscation of 30% of his property. Died in custody on February 24, 1950.

At a future trial, Russian propagandists will not be helped by references to freedom of speech. Evidence of their crimes against humanity appears every day live on RoTV. The TG channel “Pravda Gerashchenko” also daily records the crimes of Russian propagandists.

📷 US Army Sergeant, John Woods, executed the Nazis by court order. See photos below 👇

@ukrainejournal

Fighting against the odds!

Elite force bucks trend of Ukrainian losses on eastern front

‘Tavr’ Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff of the Azov Brigade, says high morale and a willingness to allow all ranks to be heard has helped the men succeed on the battlefield.

The Azov Brigade, whose leaders say has a culture of ‘mutual respect’, is tasked with repelling relentless russian attacks as the invaders make the most of an artillery mismatch (sometimes the ratio is 10:1 in russia's favour)

Makas, a staff sergeant in the second battalion, says “as many as 100 to 150 glide bombs can be launched into a sector a day”, a statement that suggests official Ukrainian military claims that 3,500 hit the frontlines in the first 77 days of the year may be an underestimate. The weapons can carry 500kg or 1.5 tonnes of explosives, the latter of which can “blow a crater 30 metres wide and 7 to 10 metres deep”, he says.

The larger bombs are understandably feared by soldiers on the frontline – and intercepting them or the aircraft that launch them is the task of air defence – of which Ukraine is short – or possibly F-16 fighter jets armed with long-range missiles, although few expect the western jets to be ready, with trained pilots, much before the end of the year, and their final numbers are uncertain.

@ukrainejournal

Message from the Freedom of Russia Legion
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So you can still use it for convenience. The bot contains links to questionnaires for the Legion and the Movement, as well as a form to submit important information, details on how to support the Legion, and answers to frequently asked questions.

We remind you of all the official ways to apply to the Legion:
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❗️ If you have any questions about joining the unit, you can contact representatives of the Legion Acquisition and Recruiting Center: https://t.me/LSR_recruit

@ukrainejournal

UK Defence Ministry Estimates 450,000 russian Troops Killed or Wounded in Ukraine

The UK Ministry of Defence estimates that 450,000 russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.

This was stated by Leo Docherty, Minister of State for the Armed Forces.

“We estimate that approximately 450,000 russian military personnel have been killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted since the start of the conflict,” he stated.

*At the same time, the number of personnel killed serving in russian private military companies (PMCs) is not clear.*

The ministry estimates that since the beginning of the war, russia has lost more than 10,000 armoured vehicles.

“Over 10,000 russian armoured vehicles, including nearly 3,000 main battle tanks, 109 fixed wing aircraft, 136 helicopters, 346 unmanned aerial vehicles, 23 naval vessels of all classes, and over 1,500 artillery systems of all types have been destroyed, abandoned, or captured by Ukraine since the start of the conflict,” Docherty said.

- Ukrinform
@ukrainejournal