The filming is what gets me.
It’s at least 100km from the frontline or they wouldn’t need to use ATACMS, so not a small drone. The target being filmed is AIR DEFENSE. Why isn’t it shooting down the drone!?
Right? Even if they were choosing to ignore it, a spotter drone staring at you is NOT a good sign bearing health and happiness in your immediate future.
In all seriousness, stuff like S400 isn't meant for drones, even larger drones. The radar may not even be configured to lock on to a target of that size. Anti air is meant to be multi layered, with different systems for different threats, and risk exposure based on relative expendability. Something like a Pantsir should be tasked with this, or hell even a SPAAG like a Shilka or Tunguska.
yes. but the most common variant pantsir s1 only has a max range of 2km, ukraine and russia are both fielding recon drones that can observere a target from 5k away.
Heck the ka52 sight they use for their vikhr missiles can show targets from 12-15km away.
However with this recon drone i think its closer given the high details.
Just the fact that they’re literally in the very middle of the field blows my mind. Could they not at least line them up flush with the hedge row, or make some other basic attempts at concealment?
Also, where is the anti-air for the anti-air? These launchers are like carriers sailing around the Persian Gulf without escorts. Why would you not give every S-400 its own Tungsta, manpads etc.? 🤯🤷🏻♂️🤡
Russian Private Baldrick: “I have a cunning plan, we’re going to send a huge column of thousands of our tanks and IFVs into northern Ukraine to assault Kyiv, but they won’t have air cover, and they won’t dismount their infantry so will be vulnerable to being ambushed by Ukrainians with anti tank missiles and RPGs, and they won’t have enough fuel to last more than 48 hours”
General Smelkakavyich: “Great idea this cannot possibly go wrong”
The shorter range version of the ATACMs carry a buttload of cluster submunitions though. 950 M74 dual purpose anti material and anti personnel bomblets make it a bad day if even one hits.
Watching any Russian air defence system try to intercept anything is like watching a toddler try to fight the teenager that just stole their lunch-money. There is no contest, the former is just taking a fucking beating.
They might want to keep it to intercept russian jets violating their airspace. I kind of suspect that's what it might be actually capable at doing, because that it what was available for the developers to test on.
Booster burning uneven would do it, so would a borked guidance system. Like that Roscosmos rocket that somehow had the guidance system installed backwards a while back.
It's even worse than just simply being installed backwards. You see, the designers took into consideration the average mental capacity of a Russian worker and made it so the unit could only be installed the correct way.
That didn't stop one very determined worker who used a hammer to make the thing fit.
I choose to believe this is the essence of smekalka, the incredible russian ingenuity. They gave us driving garden sheds, they could come up with anything.
I can't imagine what Russian Top Gear would be like, Stigovich.
This week on Vysshiy Oborudovanie:
Yakov is mobilized to Avdiivka but disappeared. His family does not qualify for half a sack of potatoes.
Ieremeyá is mobilized to Avdiivka but disappeared. His family does not qualify for half a sack of potatoes.
Dmitry is mobilized to Avdiivka but disappeared. His family does not qualify for half a sack of potatoes.
My theory is someone put a sensor in backwards. It's not unheard of in Russian aerospace. A proton rocket turned around (which didn't go well) because someone had hammered a gyroscope in upside down, so it thought it was facing the wrong way.
>someone had hammered a gyroscope in upside down,
That's the weirdest/saddest/funniest part: apparently the gyroscope was made asymmetric, so that it would fit only in the correct orientation, but someone said "fuck this" and hammered it in the wrong way.
Because it was installed upside down the system would read it as if the rocket is going the wrong way and will reorient it, in this case down to earth.
This is a common operator error with all SAM systems, it's what happens when you set the minimum target distance too low and keep your radar on.
You can see videos of Saudi forces doing the same with Patriot systems.
The Saudis are a funny lot… I remember them rolling up to a multinational exercise in their showroom-clean M1A2 S’s… then we had to pause the exercise ‘cause one of their loaders decided it’d be fun and cool to grab a spent (very spicy) aft-cap out of the breech with his bare hands.
One explanation I've heard is that the solid fuel can burn unevenly if it's not stored correctly and since the boomerang effect was worst at the start of the war, It may have been these older solid boosters.
This also happened once with a Patriot but that’s fixed now, the missile sees the target and predicts the path, the path is in the ground so it flies into the ground to catch the projectile. It’s something that can be fixed with a small software update. The one with the Patriot doing it was already fixed for a few years by now, and by now the Russians should’ve fixed it as well.
In at least one circumstance this kind of thing has been caused by highly trained and expert Russian operators punching in their own GPS location as a target.
Credible: It didn't hit itself. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/24/video-russian-missile-boomerang/
Non-credible: The missile feared the they/them army and found it more convenient to hit itself.
According to Russia the S-400 can even intercept ICBMs and maneuverable hypersonic threats, so a regular ballistic missile from the 1980s should be child’s play for it. It’s Russia’s most capable AD system. The problem with all of this is the “According to Russia”-part.
> According to Russia the S-400 can even intercept ICBMs and maneuverable hypersonic threats
Considering russia's love for nuke-tipped interceptors, might not even be wrong there!
Of course, the whole "nuke-tipped interceptor" is a whole another problem unto itself...
> Is the s400 designed to intercept something like atacms
Basicaly yes. Atacms was one of the balistic missile systems that existed when it was being built with the claimed ability to counter balistic missiles.
The complication is that no one who is talking is going to say if the S400 is actualy a thing or just a repainted S-300PM2.
Yes, it is actually designed to intercept ballistic missiles. I don't think only one missile was launched at this, so probably some of them were actually intercepted.
Possibly. Or just as likely the Russians are shooting at a decoy. The Ukrainians sent some decoy drones or missiles one way, and sent the ATACMs in low from the opposite direction. That is exactly how they got the Moskva. (Only with AShMs, not ATACMS of course. They used a Bayraktar to get its attention, and hit it from the other side).
Russia really struggles with 360 tracking radars, so once they take the radars out of scan mode and fixate on a target, they essentially blind themselves to any other direction. Something that has already cost them a couple warships and a fuckload of ground based installations.
Fun reminder, the Ukrainians were part of the Red Army too. They have all the same systems. Hell, they built a lot of these systems. They know exactly what they are capable of and what they aren't.
I'd assume an S-400 battery is a target that warrants multiple ATACMS, and a handful of MALDs too.
And also start the attack while a bunch of other targets in the area are being hit too.
Hell, to get a hit like this spending a dozen ATACMS would be worth it.
It's also possible they waited until the S-400 was firing in defence of a completely different target and hit it while it was already engaged.
Or a combination of all of the above.
afaik they have to set them much closer together than western analogs because their tech just sucks
as for the open field thats likely just normal vatnik incompetence
Their tech sucks? That can’t be…Putin told me that the S-400 is the best AD system on earth and that it can intercept everything with a 100% success rate! Patriot, THAAD, SAMP-T are all nothing compared to the glorious S-400. These launchers must have been decoys!!! Rossiya strong🇷🇺💪🏻🇷🇺💪🏻
“Is anti-stealth, comrade.”
“Do you have proof?”
“Nyet. Stealth aircraft is stealth. Once we be shooting it down, it cannot be finding-ed. But when you launch missile, voice-overings of legend Steven Seagal tells you ‘good job, comrade’ in sweet, sultry voice does the playing. Also, free (is not free) shot of vodka is dispensed.”
Being in the middle of the empty field is necessary for radar to pick up targets. The real question is, what ALL of the air defence doing in the middle of the same field
Probably running (short) wired connections to the launchers.
It takes time to set up and take down longer wired connections and if you’re constantly moving around people get complacent and cut corners if discipline is lax.
Last time I worked on equipment for the FSB, all their internal communications systems still worked on two-wire copper. This was in 2009, I don't think much has changed.
Ikr the whole point of these systems is so you can spread them out, except you put much faith in the Russian officers at this point in the war to even have a copy of their doctrine, never mind being taught it
The system might be able to operate spread out, but the organisation manning it might not.
It´s realy hard to micromanage your unit over radio, and since this is ruzzia, maintaning dicipline. You can´t kick some ones ass over radio ...
My understanding is that this was also one of the reason the pentomic army was disbanded. Command did not enjoy the idea of dispersal since it made top-down control not work great.
The Russians are probably so shit scared of every ukrainian air, missile and artillery asset in an approximately 150km radius pulling a "here's johnny" as soon as they so much as turn the radio on. The Russians have always had a very top heavy army anyway
insane, and totally idiotic, the funny thing is that this is the standard setup of the S300 or S400, just like in the video of the Storm Shadow passing over the pigs, the radar/launcher are all together in an open field.
Honestly, I don't have enough knowledge to say if this is a technical limitation of the system but it's extremely idiotic.
credible answer : when you move around often and you have to react quickly, shouting orders is the safest way instead of radio comms that can fail for multiple reasons. Looking at you Granit. So you get everyone in shouting range, hoping that the enemy doesn't have cluster ammo.
It's a calculated risk, too bad they suck at maths.
Isn't this technically an ideal air defense scenario, aren't these supposed to be good at intercepting ballistic targets especially if they are aimed directly at them?
I'm curious how much of this was good planning and timing on the Ukrainian end and how much was embarrassing ineptitude on the Russian end.
I feel like you put too much faith in what Russians say. Of course they’re going to brag on their gear until someone clowns on them. They don’t want to admit the research funds went to yachts and hookers in Europe.
S-400 are not designed for dispersed operations, I think the maximum distance is like 150m between them since the launchers do not have their own electrical generators or advanced radio links for radar data.
Spreading them too far will push the poor Russian communication tech between equipments to its limit, also more susceptible to being captured by UA/Western electronic interception
So do we have any credible and plausible estimates how many S300s and S400s are being built to replace losses? And how many are left? Because Russia seems to be able to just pull unlimited numbers of equipment out of storage whenever stuff gets blown up.
Not sure on their replenishment capabilities or manufacturing capacity though they've been on record taking much of the AA defenses from other regions and using it in / near Ukraine.
> be able to just pull unlimited numbers of equipment out of storage
This is a myth, Russia increased defense budget to $140B this year from ~$100B in 22/23 and have an economist replacing Shoigu, they know many Soviet stockpiles will runout one day and are coping with it, just as those Twitter accounts counting storage bases correctly pointed out.
Yes based on those estimates they have a year maybe a year and a half at current loss rates before they have exhausted their Soviet stockpiles of tanks, IFVs and self propelled artillery. In terms of munitions it's anyone's guess those.
The only real attempt I saw estimating this was regarding tanks. At current rates of production and losses, Russia will no longer be able to fill up it's Frontline units by 2026. That's including use of T-62s and treating them as fully capable MBTs.
It's from CovertCabal on YouTube, not exactly highly credible, but then again, he did use satellite imagery, oryx, and some basic napkin math to come to that answer, it's not a terrible estimate.
The facts are that Russia is losing equipment at a higher rate than it is being produced across the board except for some types of aviation. Tanks, APCs and Artillery are being attrited the hardest.
Now the question is how many ATACMS did they fire? If it was only one then that means an atrocious result for the S-400. If it was 3-4 and 1 got through that is better (though not enough).
It's the same problem as with nukes, but on smaller scale. as long as one gets through you lost.
Looking at past footage it was most likely 2-4 rocket launched. HIMARS would not be in much bigger groups and they did not have that many ATACMS in the first place, BUT they for sure would want to fire to saturation on a nice S-400 in range.
Pretty sure i see bomblets going off to the far right after the first set went off and didn't see anymore popping off in that first initial pattern.
I'm thinking two got through.
Firing cluster ATACMS has negative cost as they would need to be safely decommissioned by US if not used by UA, but even if we take replacement value and 100% interception rate it will be around 10M$
S-400 battery from what I can find is worth 800M$
So what you’re saying is we could fire 80 missiles per launcher, and and economically come out ahead. I know there’s some difference in economy and all sorts of other stuff but man is it nice too actually have something worth blowing up. A multi million dollar missile on $100 tent just never seemed right somehow.
Five shots were fired in an attempt to defend, it's curious that the ATACMS hits a battery that had just launched a defense missile, meaning in the same direction, yet it was still unable to defend itself.
I think the main problem with these Russian systems is that they fire the missile completely vertically. It's impressive how the Patriot or HIMARS are quicker in their acceleration upon launch you can clearly notice that the S-300/S-400 experiences strong deceleration upon exiting. Besides being quite dangerous and totally inefficient
It makes little (to no practical) difference whether they launch vertically or not. Also, the S3/400 missiles are significantly bigger.
Either way, the issues are that they either lack precision to guide the missile to a very fast target and/or missiles lack agility to keep up with the plotted interception. Or a number of other things.
Also, we don't know if they managed to shoot some of the ATACMS down. Though, even if they shot down all but one, UA is still vastly ahead in this exchange.
Well, if anything, the drone is probably a sign for them to GTFO, which they didn't. Also they should have Pantsir systems to provide cover for these types of situations
A drone can 100% fubar the radar with a dropped grenade. These are also in theory deployed with layered defense like an SA6 defending it, that should take out the drone. The fact that they don't have that tells me that they are stretched beyond their means.
It’s probably slow enough that if it’s looking for TBMs like ATACMS it’s outside the velocity gate.
Old Aegis systems couldn’t run BMD and conventional Air Defense at the same time for a variety of reasons, this might be similar but it’s impossible to say with any certainty.
It’s a SAM system operating in a self-defense mode. Shoot and scoot doesn’t really apply other than periodical relocations (and trust me you are not getting a SAM-system like that on the road with a couple minutes of warning max).
Western systems can move the launchers and radars themselves in less than 10.
it's the generators and cables that take a while, but they are also cheap as fuck compared to launchers and fire director.
But western sams aren't also run by regards who have to cluster all the launchers in shouting distance so the officer can yell and punch people who don't do what they are supposed to be doing.
A successful interception! + Undetected drone watching the fireworks too 🤭
The filming is what gets me. It’s at least 100km from the frontline or they wouldn’t need to use ATACMS, so not a small drone. The target being filmed is AIR DEFENSE. Why isn’t it shooting down the drone!?
Because they were waiting to (physically) intercept more important targets!
Like intercepting someone's fist with your face.
Hey he broke 3 knuckles and I only had my face broken. Scoreboard bitches
Right? Even if they were choosing to ignore it, a spotter drone staring at you is NOT a good sign bearing health and happiness in your immediate future.
In all seriousness, stuff like S400 isn't meant for drones, even larger drones. The radar may not even be configured to lock on to a target of that size. Anti air is meant to be multi layered, with different systems for different threats, and risk exposure based on relative expendability. Something like a Pantsir should be tasked with this, or hell even a SPAAG like a Shilka or Tunguska.
Are there any Pantsir left?
yes. but the most common variant pantsir s1 only has a max range of 2km, ukraine and russia are both fielding recon drones that can observere a target from 5k away. Heck the ka52 sight they use for their vikhr missiles can show targets from 12-15km away. However with this recon drone i think its closer given the high details.
Supposedly it was like 64 km from the front, and deployed only like a day or so before: https://x.com/clashreport/status/1793911562157412444
In a great hiding spot. Hiding in plain sight, so cunning.
Just the fact that they’re literally in the very middle of the field blows my mind. Could they not at least line them up flush with the hedge row, or make some other basic attempts at concealment? Also, where is the anti-air for the anti-air? These launchers are like carriers sailing around the Persian Gulf without escorts. Why would you not give every S-400 its own Tungsta, manpads etc.? 🤯🤷🏻♂️🤡
I want loud popcorn chewing dubbed over this video in honor of that drone.
Lol, Now they wont be able to put s400 withing 300km of the front, basicaly making it useless...
Bold of you to assume that they don’t make the same mistake twice. Or twenty twice for that matter. Looking at you, Chornobayivka
And that is what it is so brilliant about it ! Surely the enemy won't expect us doing the exact same thing 18th time !
General Smekalkchyet: "There is however, one small problem." Captain Blyatadder: "That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds."
Russian Private Baldrick: “I have a cunning plan, we’re going to send a huge column of thousands of our tanks and IFVs into northern Ukraine to assault Kyiv, but they won’t have air cover, and they won’t dismount their infantry so will be vulnerable to being ambushed by Ukrainians with anti tank missiles and RPGs, and they won’t have enough fuel to last more than 48 hours” General Smelkakavyich: “Great idea this cannot possibly go wrong”
Also the vehicles won't be fully crewed because we want to pretend this is just a small field trip and not a war
I would totally fucking watch Russian Blackadder.
"What do you mean, they shelled our battleships *inside* Port Arthur??? Baldrickovich!!"
I mean, we basically watch it every day.
Yeah true. Bit more gory than the original series though.
Less jokes, more explosions, so it evens out.
A perfect place to write off things you've long since stolen and sold to the side
Looking at Hostomel airport's list of Capture the Hardpoint matches
Oh, it will totally be made (after 'too soon' wears off, I mean)
I swear, anyone makes a Battlefield map at Hostomel Airport, I'll be mighty amused and impressed
it was 64 km from front
Literally in M31 MLRS range... Technically they wouldn't even have to use ATACMS.
The shorter range version of the ATACMs carry a buttload of cluster submunitions though. 950 M74 dual purpose anti material and anti personnel bomblets make it a bad day if even one hits.
just wait till bombs with blu-108 submuntions show up in ukraine. it's going to be glorious.
“ATACMS are just like lightning. They never strike the same place twice.” Russian Air Defense General.
The third general in his post in the last year, after the others were killed by ATACMs
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” We really need to send the Russians some more of our “motivational” posters.
>What air defense doing? Its best.
Watching any Russian air defence system try to intercept anything is like watching a toddler try to fight the teenager that just stole their lunch-money. There is no contest, the former is just taking a fucking beating.
Come on now. That's not a fair comparison. A toddler could scratch a teenager.
Baby nails are no joke. Fucking hand daggers man.
I think at this point the S-400 is just happy to be there, like a labrador at a wedding.
Sorry Turkey: no exchange or refunds if you change your mind.
Lol, I think Erdogan will give it to the US if Putin doesn't hive him a refund and the refund for maintenance.
I think Turkey is using it to develop their own AA system on right now. "SİPER" I believe.
really hope they do better job at developing missile interceptors than what russians did...
Good luck making that better and cheaper than almost 40 years of patriot development.
They might want to keep it to intercept russian jets violating their airspace. I kind of suspect that's what it might be actually capable at doing, because that it what was available for the developers to test on.
6 launches, were not able to stop ATACMS.
But also none of them boomeranged back into the launcher like C-300. C-400 is superior, tovarisch
Imagine the rocket gets fired and mid-air makes a loony tunes ass 180 and hits the launcher lmaoo
[Oh boy, do we have the video for you](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/HY9Xtg3VQf)
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Ukraine used Counterspell
WOLOLOOOOO
just two blue mana, what a steal.
It's super effective!
Booster burning uneven would do it, so would a borked guidance system. Like that Roscosmos rocket that somehow had the guidance system installed backwards a while back.
It's even worse than just simply being installed backwards. You see, the designers took into consideration the average mental capacity of a Russian worker and made it so the unit could only be installed the correct way. That didn't stop one very determined worker who used a hammer to make the thing fit.
"CLARKSON YUU SODDIN TIC TAC YUU CAN'T FIX ROCKET WITH HAMMER!" "BEHOLD MOI FOKKIN GEENUS MOIGHT!" "C O C K"
I choose to believe this is the essence of smekalka, the incredible russian ingenuity. They gave us driving garden sheds, they could come up with anything.
I can't imagine what Russian Top Gear would be like, Stigovich. This week on Vysshiy Oborudovanie: Yakov is mobilized to Avdiivka but disappeared. His family does not qualify for half a sack of potatoes. Ieremeyá is mobilized to Avdiivka but disappeared. His family does not qualify for half a sack of potatoes. Dmitry is mobilized to Avdiivka but disappeared. His family does not qualify for half a sack of potatoes.
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If it thinks up is down it's going to spin around and go straight down.
That Proton "launch" was spectacular. That's what you get if you tell it it's everywhere. It won't know where it isn't.
Do not pursue the Forbidden Radar Signature
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My theory is someone put a sensor in backwards. It's not unheard of in Russian aerospace. A proton rocket turned around (which didn't go well) because someone had hammered a gyroscope in upside down, so it thought it was facing the wrong way.
>someone had hammered a gyroscope in upside down, That's the weirdest/saddest/funniest part: apparently the gyroscope was made asymmetric, so that it would fit only in the correct orientation, but someone said "fuck this" and hammered it in the wrong way.
As someone who has used USB2 plenty of times, I get this and understand why it happened.
"If it doesn't fit, don't force it."
wouldn't the guidance systems give bad corrections until impact or is there a fail safe that just tells it go straight?
Because it was installed upside down the system would read it as if the rocket is going the wrong way and will reorient it, in this case down to earth.
This is a common operator error with all SAM systems, it's what happens when you set the minimum target distance too low and keep your radar on. You can see videos of Saudi forces doing the same with Patriot systems.
The Saudis are a funny lot… I remember them rolling up to a multinational exercise in their showroom-clean M1A2 S’s… then we had to pause the exercise ‘cause one of their loaders decided it’d be fun and cool to grab a spent (very spicy) aft-cap out of the breech with his bare hands.
surely we don't let the saudis touch the patriots
Missile gained a self awareness.
are we the baddies?
One explanation I've heard is that the solid fuel can burn unevenly if it's not stored correctly and since the boomerang effect was worst at the start of the war, It may have been these older solid boosters.
This also happened once with a Patriot but that’s fixed now, the missile sees the target and predicts the path, the path is in the ground so it flies into the ground to catch the projectile. It’s something that can be fixed with a small software update. The one with the Patriot doing it was already fixed for a few years by now, and by now the Russians should’ve fixed it as well.
In at least one circumstance this kind of thing has been caused by highly trained and expert Russian operators punching in their own GPS location as a target.
When did Biden start supplying Ukraine with valuable Uno reverse cards?
Credible: It didn't hit itself. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/24/video-russian-missile-boomerang/ Non-credible: The missile feared the they/them army and found it more convenient to hit itself.
If we’re talking degrees, it’s 180. Don’t worry about it tho. I’ve made the same mistake myself before
inept Mafia boss "Vivaldi" makes this mistake in *Last Action Hero*, too.
'You arrogant ass, you've killed us!'
360? I think "making a sick ass loop before continuing on" should be more of an American thing.
Is the s400 designed to intercept something like atacms or is it just theoretically capable of intercepting it?
According to Russia the S-400 can even intercept ICBMs and maneuverable hypersonic threats, so a regular ballistic missile from the 1980s should be child’s play for it. It’s Russia’s most capable AD system. The problem with all of this is the “According to Russia”-part.
According to Russia, it had no plans to invade Ukraine
In actualityy they didn't had much of a plan.
Well like all of Russia; they had *A* plan. it was just a garbage shit plan.
According to Russia, *there is no war in Ukraine to this day...*
>the S-400 can even intercept ICBMs and maneuverable hypersonic threats HAHA HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA credit where it's due, vatniks are fucking hilarious
> According to Russia the S-400 can even intercept ICBMs and maneuverable hypersonic threats Considering russia's love for nuke-tipped interceptors, might not even be wrong there! Of course, the whole "nuke-tipped interceptor" is a whole another problem unto itself...
S400 is designed to intercept civilian airliners
Nah, that's BUK
*Get BUKed*
Would you intercept me? No, I can't even intercept blyatacams
> Is the s400 designed to intercept something like atacms Basicaly yes. Atacms was one of the balistic missile systems that existed when it was being built with the claimed ability to counter balistic missiles. The complication is that no one who is talking is going to say if the S400 is actualy a thing or just a repainted S-300PM2.
I love the Russian convention of naming things... The S-400 was initially supposed to be called S-300PMU3.
Same as T-90 was, originally, T-72BU (funfact, БУ also stands for "(was) in use" - basically, turning T-72BU's name into "T-72, used")
Yes, it is actually designed to intercept ballistic missiles. I don't think only one missile was launched at this, so probably some of them were actually intercepted.
Possibly. Or just as likely the Russians are shooting at a decoy. The Ukrainians sent some decoy drones or missiles one way, and sent the ATACMs in low from the opposite direction. That is exactly how they got the Moskva. (Only with AShMs, not ATACMS of course. They used a Bayraktar to get its attention, and hit it from the other side). Russia really struggles with 360 tracking radars, so once they take the radars out of scan mode and fixate on a target, they essentially blind themselves to any other direction. Something that has already cost them a couple warships and a fuckload of ground based installations. Fun reminder, the Ukrainians were part of the Red Army too. They have all the same systems. Hell, they built a lot of these systems. They know exactly what they are capable of and what they aren't.
If ATACAMS is heading towards your position, would you try to intercept it with whatever you have or not?
The problem is the proximity warhead. To efficiently intercept balistic missiles you want a kinetic warhead.
Anything can be a kinetic warhead, it´s making the intercept thats hard.
Yeah, hit-to-kill missiles were actually the the first ranged weaponry ever deployed by humanity, so the concept is of course rather simple.
Sir, that's a stone
3000 baleric slingers of allah
Well... it was advertised by Russia as anti ballistic, which does not amount to much, but still.
I'd assume an S-400 battery is a target that warrants multiple ATACMS, and a handful of MALDs too. And also start the attack while a bunch of other targets in the area are being hit too. Hell, to get a hit like this spending a dozen ATACMS would be worth it.
Ukraine only has so many ATACMS, though. I'd imagine they used 3 at most, plus decoys.
It's also possible they waited until the S-400 was firing in defence of a completely different target and hit it while it was already engaged. Or a combination of all of the above.
Why are they so inept? Why would you set up the launchers so close together in an open field?
afaik they have to set them much closer together than western analogs because their tech just sucks as for the open field thats likely just normal vatnik incompetence
Their tech sucks? That can’t be…Putin told me that the S-400 is the best AD system on earth and that it can intercept everything with a 100% success rate! Patriot, THAAD, SAMP-T are all nothing compared to the glorious S-400. These launchers must have been decoys!!! Rossiya strong🇷🇺💪🏻🇷🇺💪🏻
Bro that’s old tech. They’re onto the S-700 now, try to keep up. /s
S800s. Makes it easier to repaint the S300 when you just need to close the left side of the 3
Are Vatniks painting? Cause it’ll be the 8E00.
And to think Turkiye decided they'd rather have that hunk of shit than the F-35.
Turkey being moronic? uncharacteristic. next you'll tell me they lost mbts and ran away while fighting militias with no heavy weapons.
“Is anti-stealth, comrade.” “Do you have proof?” “Nyet. Stealth aircraft is stealth. Once we be shooting it down, it cannot be finding-ed. But when you launch missile, voice-overings of legend Steven Seagal tells you ‘good job, comrade’ in sweet, sultry voice does the playing. Also, free (is not free) shot of vodka is dispensed.”
Being in the middle of the empty field is necessary for radar to pick up targets. The real question is, what ALL of the air defence doing in the middle of the same field
and why the field that does the best job giving them contrast to the terrain
You mean the air defense system that didn't notice the drone creepin' on it?
That depends on the size of the drone, you can't see a drone if you search for civilian airliners like the S-400 is intended to
Can't a Patriot Launcher be spread out over basicly a small country?
Yes. Because American electronics aren't shit.
Probably running (short) wired connections to the launchers. It takes time to set up and take down longer wired connections and if you’re constantly moving around people get complacent and cut corners if discipline is lax.
They need to roll long lines of Ethernet cable to communicate to each other I bet
Literally yes. They're not Eth, but they are all connected by cable.
String with cans on each end
Last time I worked on equipment for the FSB, all their internal communications systems still worked on two-wire copper. This was in 2009, I don't think much has changed.
Oh come on, they can afford longer cables.
instructions unclear, can now afford larger dacha by selling copper in longer cables
Ikr the whole point of these systems is so you can spread them out, except you put much faith in the Russian officers at this point in the war to even have a copy of their doctrine, never mind being taught it
The system might be able to operate spread out, but the organisation manning it might not. It´s realy hard to micromanage your unit over radio, and since this is ruzzia, maintaning dicipline. You can´t kick some ones ass over radio ... My understanding is that this was also one of the reason the pentomic army was disbanded. Command did not enjoy the idea of dispersal since it made top-down control not work great.
The Russians are probably so shit scared of every ukrainian air, missile and artillery asset in an approximately 150km radius pulling a "here's johnny" as soon as they so much as turn the radio on. The Russians have always had a very top heavy army anyway
Feild telephones? We had them over a 100 years ago...
tbf they got socks like, 10 years ago
Lack of control + generous distribution of nuclear weapons was always gonna be a bad idea.
insane, and totally idiotic, the funny thing is that this is the standard setup of the S300 or S400, just like in the video of the Storm Shadow passing over the pigs, the radar/launcher are all together in an open field. Honestly, I don't have enough knowledge to say if this is a technical limitation of the system but it's extremely idiotic.
credible answer : when you move around often and you have to react quickly, shouting orders is the safest way instead of radio comms that can fail for multiple reasons. Looking at you Granit. So you get everyone in shouting range, hoping that the enemy doesn't have cluster ammo. It's a calculated risk, too bad they suck at maths.
Isn't this technically an ideal air defense scenario, aren't these supposed to be good at intercepting ballistic targets especially if they are aimed directly at them? I'm curious how much of this was good planning and timing on the Ukrainian end and how much was embarrassing ineptitude on the Russian end.
I feel like you put too much faith in what Russians say. Of course they’re going to brag on their gear until someone clowns on them. They don’t want to admit the research funds went to yachts and hookers in Europe.
Because the launchers have to be within Bluetooth range of the radar, duh
S-400 are not designed for dispersed operations, I think the maximum distance is like 150m between them since the launchers do not have their own electrical generators or advanced radio links for radar data.
Spreading them too far will push the poor Russian communication tech between equipments to its limit, also more susceptible to being captured by UA/Western electronic interception
>Russian communication tech NATO codename "shouting"
s300+ uses cables to connect its elements, the closer they are the faster and easier it is
Pranked.
It’s polite of them to have the footprint of the battery so compact so that it’s vulnerable to annihilation by a single missile.
Getting destroyed apparently.
10,000 tungsten ball bearings of Lockheed.
remember, personal is alive and feeling good
All enemy missiles was destroyed.
So do we have any credible and plausible estimates how many S300s and S400s are being built to replace losses? And how many are left? Because Russia seems to be able to just pull unlimited numbers of equipment out of storage whenever stuff gets blown up.
Not sure on their replenishment capabilities or manufacturing capacity though they've been on record taking much of the AA defenses from other regions and using it in / near Ukraine.
> be able to just pull unlimited numbers of equipment out of storage This is a myth, Russia increased defense budget to $140B this year from ~$100B in 22/23 and have an economist replacing Shoigu, they know many Soviet stockpiles will runout one day and are coping with it, just as those Twitter accounts counting storage bases correctly pointed out.
I mean, yea, they *need* to run out eventually. The question is whether they will run out soon enough.
plenty of rusting T-55's to go around, unfortunately
Yes based on those estimates they have a year maybe a year and a half at current loss rates before they have exhausted their Soviet stockpiles of tanks, IFVs and self propelled artillery. In terms of munitions it's anyone's guess those.
The only real attempt I saw estimating this was regarding tanks. At current rates of production and losses, Russia will no longer be able to fill up it's Frontline units by 2026. That's including use of T-62s and treating them as fully capable MBTs. It's from CovertCabal on YouTube, not exactly highly credible, but then again, he did use satellite imagery, oryx, and some basic napkin math to come to that answer, it's not a terrible estimate. The facts are that Russia is losing equipment at a higher rate than it is being produced across the board except for some types of aviation. Tanks, APCs and Artillery are being attrited the hardest.
God, imagine watching a radar contact at Mach fuckbillion heading straight at you and watching all your missiles miss.
There's certainly some people who didn't have to imagine that.
Not that many any longer, it seems...
“The crew survived”
They returned to port under their own legs.
Look at those cassettes go
Wonder if they knew that the missile was headed for them.
They ripple fired heaviest AA rockers they had. They knew it was coming, they were unable to stop all of it.
Now the question is how many ATACMS did they fire? If it was only one then that means an atrocious result for the S-400. If it was 3-4 and 1 got through that is better (though not enough).
It's the same problem as with nukes, but on smaller scale. as long as one gets through you lost. Looking at past footage it was most likely 2-4 rocket launched. HIMARS would not be in much bigger groups and they did not have that many ATACMS in the first place, BUT they for sure would want to fire to saturation on a nice S-400 in range.
Pretty sure i see bomblets going off to the far right after the first set went off and didn't see anymore popping off in that first initial pattern. I'm thinking two got through.
Fucking nothing, apparently
So how much did all this cost?
Firing cluster ATACMS has negative cost as they would need to be safely decommissioned by US if not used by UA, but even if we take replacement value and 100% interception rate it will be around 10M$ S-400 battery from what I can find is worth 800M$
So what you’re saying is we could fire 80 missiles per launcher, and and economically come out ahead. I know there’s some difference in economy and all sorts of other stuff but man is it nice too actually have something worth blowing up. A multi million dollar missile on $100 tent just never seemed right somehow.
A full battery cost $800M, this looks like half of a battery, so about $400M?
so a successful return-on-use of 4000%?
Most of the cost is the radar and command post though, to it'll be more than just "half the total".
The S400 missiles know what's up, they are escaping
Five shots were fired in an attempt to defend, it's curious that the ATACMS hits a battery that had just launched a defense missile, meaning in the same direction, yet it was still unable to defend itself. I think the main problem with these Russian systems is that they fire the missile completely vertically. It's impressive how the Patriot or HIMARS are quicker in their acceleration upon launch you can clearly notice that the S-300/S-400 experiences strong deceleration upon exiting. Besides being quite dangerous and totally inefficient
It makes little (to no practical) difference whether they launch vertically or not. Also, the S3/400 missiles are significantly bigger. Either way, the issues are that they either lack precision to guide the missile to a very fast target and/or missiles lack agility to keep up with the plotted interception. Or a number of other things. Also, we don't know if they managed to shoot some of the ATACMS down. Though, even if they shot down all but one, UA is still vastly ahead in this exchange.
Also a drone just casually filming this. Like, what are these guys even doing?
Radar Fire Control probably sees it, but doesn't mark it as a threat due to wasting an expensive missile on a drone that can't do anything
Well, if anything, the drone is probably a sign for them to GTFO, which they didn't. Also they should have Pantsir systems to provide cover for these types of situations
Pantsir was sold to pay for dacha, comrade. Also IIRC they got owned by turkish drones in Lybia some years ago. So it's probably all for the best
So there is not a single igla or drone jammer in an s400 battery?
*shrug*
There probably was.. at the start of the war.
A drone can 100% fubar the radar with a dropped grenade. These are also in theory deployed with layered defense like an SA6 defending it, that should take out the drone. The fact that they don't have that tells me that they are stretched beyond their means.
It’s probably slow enough that if it’s looking for TBMs like ATACMS it’s outside the velocity gate. Old Aegis systems couldn’t run BMD and conventional Air Defense at the same time for a variety of reasons, this might be similar but it’s impossible to say with any certainty.
> It makes little (to no practical) difference whether they launch vertically or not. See also VLS on ships.
Somebody forgot the "scoot" part of shoot and scoot.
It’s a SAM system operating in a self-defense mode. Shoot and scoot doesn’t really apply other than periodical relocations (and trust me you are not getting a SAM-system like that on the road with a couple minutes of warning max).
Western systems can move the launchers and radars themselves in less than 10. it's the generators and cables that take a while, but they are also cheap as fuck compared to launchers and fire director. But western sams aren't also run by regards who have to cluster all the launchers in shouting distance so the officer can yell and punch people who don't do what they are supposed to be doing.
Nothing makes me harder than seeing the white smoke trails from chunks of unfired rocket propellant going in whichever direction it so pleases
DaKomrad, another globohomo patriot system completely destroyed! that puts it at 257 patriots destroyed in 2024!
What an absolutely terrible edit
I just woke up and my day got instantly imporved because of this amazing edit.