Quote from: DaRude on Today at 06:37:21 PM

Quote from: LTU_btc on February 02, 2024, 07:38:00 PM

Quote from: paxmao on February 02, 2024, 12:24:37 AM

Significant strikes have happened during the last two days in Crimea. Airfields first, and then a missile ship. I think that at this rate the Black Sea fleet is going to become the black sea open-sea aquarium if the war goes on for a year. Ruzzia is attacking wave after wave and smashing littles villages and a couple of mid-sized towns. I wonder if the economics work when comparing that with the Moscova, the submarine lost, the ILs and SUs lost and now a small-ish rocket boat from a few marine drone attack.

The crew of the ship... well, no chance of survival - around 40 people punched the exit ticket from the world of the living. Just do not be stupid and do not die for Putin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAx3F8vdeU8

Black Sea fleet is eventually turning into submarine fleet. Saw video how they completely destroyed ship Ivanovets, that one looked really impressive. And it's all done by country that have no naval.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDZVA_2t0PY
Regarding to Il-76 that was hit by Ukraine recently. Russia tried to push version that this plane was full of Ukrainian POW's which were sent for exchange. If that would be case, I'm sure that Russia would show field full of dead bodies and parts of bodies. But all they have done is showing images of several bodies which is difficult to identify. And somehow it's difficult to believe that there was just 3 Russian troops to take care of 65 Ukrainia POW's. Sounds like way too small number of guards for such big number of Ukrainian's

UAVs and UWVs (water?) are definitely changing the landscape of the battlefields. Guessing their profile is low enough to hide between waves from the radar, and small arms doesn't work well vs a swarm. Country doesn't have to have a navy/air force to use drones, Iran is not much of an aerial power but we all know how devastating their drones are. As far as drumming up Ukraine abilities, with the full intel of US and NATO, all of their satellites and aircraft constantly patrolling the black sea, and the provided drones with full comms, these sea drones have as much to do with Ukraine as military pilots flying for Vietnam had to do with Vietnam.

Your attempt to poke holes and question Il-76 tragedy is just silly. What is the typical ratio of enforcement agents to prisoners on the transport planes? Russians are just timing this to present a full investigation and reveal evidence to courts/UN at maximum publicity when the timing suits them the best. Why on earth would Russia reveal their cards now so Ukraine can prepare defense and come up with new version of the events? Having tangible proof that American supplied military hardware was used on Russian territory removes US's plausible deniability defense, and forces them to make a choice. Either hard stop on using missiles on Russian territory or de jure US becomes part of the conflict, neither is a good options, of course US can continues to ignore this, but that would set an even worst precedent where now Iran/Russia/others would be able to directly provide missiles to proxies for attack on US/EU assets. Total diplomacy fail, on one hand holding Iran responsible for their drones used by others, while on another attempting to distance itself and claim US is not responsible that their weapons are used inside Russia Huh

Edit: In fact it almost seems too perfect of a case for Russia. American missiles take down a plane full of Ukrainian POWs inside Russia, this will be for the books. What do you think this does for F16 and Taurus delivery timelines?

They are certainly changing the landscape of the Black Sea fleet, so it is not like a "neutral" thing, it is more like an asymmetric advantage to the country which has no fleet as such. 90% of the true motivation to invade Ukraine was to be able to use Crimea and the sea port. It is normally kept quiet, but Russia is loosing the sea and littoral battles by failing to take Odesa and then failing to secure their military assets in Crimea.

It does nothing to delivery times. There were clearly not enough bodies for that plane to be carrying anything but weapons. All you are doing is the ordinary mix of half-baked info and Kremlin line interpretation.

You can see the images of the Russian Project 12411 "Ivanovets", a missile carrying ship, being sunk here: