this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024

124 points (95.6% liked)

News

23652 readers

2663 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

124

US close to agreeing on long-range missiles for Ukraine; delivery to take months (www.reuters.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/news

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

Months?! Despite that, the article is a good read

[–] partial_accumen 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

This announcement is a geopolitical weapon that arrived immediately. It forces russia to consider a future where all kinds of things they deem relatively save right now suddenly become much less so. Its also a message to russia that more weapon systems are on their way and the West can see a future delivering them. Just this announcement alone will alter russian war plans.

Does russia decided to throw their forces onto the front now to get larger gains before these weapons arrive?
Does russia decided to hold back forces and move strategic assets outside of the possible range of these new weapons at the cost of battlefield gains and needed response time to Ukrainian counterattacks?
Have the weapons already been delivered and the announcement is just for show to give the appearance of a gap of time?

In the future when/if the weapons arrive is the second geopolitical, and at that time, actual physical weapon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

yeah this also gives russians ample warning to move all of their actual intended targets just outside the range, like how they already did with aircraft

[–] colonelp4nic 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Armchair General here. When they moved their aircraft further back, Russia greatly reduced their range and ordnance options while increasing the time Ukraine had to prepare for the strikes. Similarly, Russia splitting up their stockpiles to reduce strike effectiveness will have a significant impact on Russia's already-strained logistics network. That's the same reason why a relatively low volume of ATACMS has had such a substantial impact on their ability to wage war.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

right, so as far as i understand rn, russian air force does several things that suck balls for ukrainians:

a. starting two and half year ago, russian strategic bombers lobbed long range cruise missiles like kalibr, kh-22, repurposed anti-ship missiles and such at ukrainian powerplants and so on and so on. these things have really long range, and some were launched from places like caspian sea; these heavy and medium bombers sit at airbases far, far outside any of these missiles range, they stay well outside ukrainian air defense in air as well. i doubt this decision will change much in this regard

for some considerable time now, russian close air support stays well outside of ukrainian surface to air missiles range by using glide bombs to deliver bombs to the frontline. ukrainians can't target these cas missions with their own air force because their missiles lack range, and any of these are also armed with their own. this is where not announcing these missiles delivery, but just shipping them and dropping without warning would have greatest effect, i believe. ukrainians lack means to get rid of this aircraft; they do have drones that go far enough, but drones are slow and very shiny on radar, providing plenty of warning, so aircraft can scramble in time. proper cruise missiles and especially ballistic missiles are much faster so they could catch some of these still on the ground. this is what happened when i think like 30? of ka-52, atgm-armed helicopters, were destroyed on ground without warning in two atacms strikes one day apart. these things were important in stopping ukrainian armored attacks in the south, until these were burning in luhansk and berdyansk.

now instead of destroying large part of russian su-25s, su-34s, su-35s, mig-29s, mig-31, and other such aircraft, on the ground, without warning, with exactly these cruise missiles, americans blared to the whole world that they will deliver these things months away from now, so that now... what exactly? su-25 will pick up a little bit more wear on every cas mission? daily scheduled pulverizing of donbas villages will be delayed by some extra half an hour? extra warning is meaningless because ukrainians don't have means to strike these aircraft when in air. it's just part of logistics for the bomb that lands somewhere in kharkiv that a bit longer part of it happens on a bomber. nothing stops russians from using well-connected airbases with rail links to launch these strikes. americans just gave up very important, very permanent and immediately impactful effect for nothing

or, if you will, these might be fears of eScAlAtIoN because some of these targets might have been, potentially, maybe, nominally russian strategic bombers, as in part of their nuclear triad. not like it's actually a big or important part of it. if anyone took this seriously, kursk incursion should make clear that all russian lines are complete bluff. for now, the most potent russian air defense asset is american policy on long range weapons

III. russian jets flying air defense sorties will have to be stationed at further airbases. this changes little, because all the difference is that now these jets will just take a bit more wear on every mission

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

for some considerable time now, russian close air support stays well outside of ukrainian surface to air missiles range by using glide bombs to deliver bombs to the frontline.

The F-16s can solve this. The range of even the older AIM-120C AMRAAM exceeds that of the Russian glide bombs by 30 to 60 kilometers. The D variant, and I have seen Ukrainian F-16s with this loaded, has a range of 180 kilometers. That's enough to knock a Russian aircraft out of the sky long before they can use a glide bomb.

The US has said they will be providing Ukraine with the 120D and Raytheon is maxxing out production of them.

III. russian jets flying air defense sorties will have to be stationed at further airbases.

The JASSM will push them back hundreds of miles and that's no small matter. Aircraft like the SU-25 only have a range of 560 miles, roughly 900 kilometers. The JASSM could push them so far back that they become unusable as they can't carry enough fuel! The MIG-25 might be able to make it, just barely, but there will be no range left for any combat. Even the SU-34 will have to fly lots of extra distance in order to keep far enough back and all that extra flight time comes at a serious cost to tempo and aircraft availability.

The JASSM is no small thing, don't underestimate what will happen when it shows up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

would be much cooler if it showed up unannounced. AIM-120D has long range, but so is R-37 and R-33. (yes total range is larger than no-escape range, and probably western and eastern missiles measure it in different ways, but still). F-16s are delivered in symbolic numbers now and for the time being, their only job is plinking shaheds with sidewinders and won't do that until more are delivered, from what i understand

i'm not saying this will do nothing, i'm saying effect of this delivery could have been much more permanent

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)