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How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Popular Mechanics. I've been swallowing their propaganda since I was a tyke. After Mad, it was the next magazine I would curl up on the drugstore floor with.

So...
The Truth About Russia’s ‘Hypersonic’ Kinzhal Missiles

In aerospace circles, though, the term “hypersonic” is used more specifically for vehicles which can maneuver freely at over Mach 5 inside Earth’s atmosphere—not for those that can only make minor course corrections.
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“Kinzhal is nothing more than an air-launched ballistic missile,” Jeffrey Lewis, Ph.D., of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, tells Popular Mechanics. “It’s only hypersonic in the sense that pretty much all ballistic missiles are hypersonic.”

Sidharth Kaushal, Ph.D., of the U.K.-based defense think tank RUSI is similarly doubtful about the “hypersonic” label. “It doesn’t meet the maneuverability criteria for being a true hypersonic weapon,” he tells Popular Mechanics.

Their doubts are rooted in the Kinzhal’s lineage. It is an air-launched version of a ground-launched Iskander ballistic missile, with only fairly minor modifications for the new launch method. It was first seen in 2010 proposals for a weapon to be carried by a MiG-31 “Foxhound” fighter.
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Perhaps the most unlikely claim made for the Kinzhal is the range of 1200 miles compared to just 300 miles for its ground-based cousin, Iskander.
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Adding the plane’s combat radius would be like the USAF claiming that its JDAM bombs—actual range: 15 miles—had a range of 4,015 miles when carried by a B-52H bomber.

Perhaps to get the true range of the Kinzhal, we should subtract the combat radius of the MiG-31 from the 1,200 miles quoted by Putin, which would give a figure closer to the 700 miles mentioned above.

So, Putin’s new missile is not breaking the laws of physics—just stretching the truth.
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That sounds about right, doesn't it?


In the Battle of Ukraine’s Patriot vs. Russia’s Kinzhal Missile, Which Is Winning?

The ratio of how many missiles were incoming against how many interceptors were needed to bring them down will be important for defense analysts. And even more important to the people of Kyiv: do they have enough Patriots to stop everything that Russia lobs at them?

Meanwhile, Putin is probably listening to his military give its version of how effective the Kinzhal is—and deciding who to blame.
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I stand on my closing statement of the previous article.
 
Meanwhile, Putin is probably listening to his military give its version of how effective the Kinzhal is—and deciding who to blame.
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Hmm. If they’re smart, Putin is probably trying to figure out who to promote and congratulate.
 
Elixir said:
Meanwhile, Putin is probably listening to his military give its version of how effective the Kinzhal is—and deciding who to blame.
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Hmm. If they’re smart, Putin is probably trying to figure out who to promote and congratulate.
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I'm thinking the "who to blame" comment predates the Russian scientists being arrested for treason article Cheerful Charlie posted up by hours.
It's the Russian model, why praise when you can punish and scare others away from working in the field.
 
barbos said:
Dude, you do realize that Zelensky&Co were planning to capitulate even before Russians entered Ukraine? (and russians knew that)
Yes, we now know that for sure.
But then Americans and British told him officially "we will not support you if you surrender"
Unofficially, they told him: We will give you the full support, money, weapons, you can do whatever you want, full immunity from anything, and we will save you in case russians overrun you, but you have to fight russians.

Basically they bought that bastard.
Yes, russians miscalculated there, they underestimated western "elite" hatred for Russia.
Zele sold his country for a mansion in Miami and a couple of hundreds of millions of US dollars.
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Barbos swallows more crap put out by Russia's propagandists. Rumors that Zelensky had accumulated great wealth overseas were put out in social media in 2022, but nobody could ever find any evidence to support them.

See:

Fact check: No proof to back claims on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's assets and income​



Forbes estimates that his total assets come to roughly $4 million:

President Zelensky Is Not A Billionaire. So How Much Is He Worth?​


These claims keep getting recirculated even after they have been debunked:

Unproven claims about Volodymyr Zelensky's wealth resurface online​

 
Copernicus said:
Barbos swallows more crap put out by Russia's propagandists. Rumors that Zelensky had accumulated great wealth overseas were put out in social media in 2022, but nobody could ever find any evidence to support them.
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I don't think barbos's position is unique within Putinstan. And I think the reasons are obvious to anyone who lives in a country with basic freedoms and a civil society.
 
T.G.G. Moogly said:
Copernicus said:
Barbos swallows more crap put out by Russia's propagandists. Rumors that Zelensky had accumulated great wealth overseas were put out in social media in 2022, but nobody could ever find any evidence to support them.
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I don't think barbos's position is unique within Putinstan. And I think the reasons are obvious to anyone who lives in a country with basic freedoms and a civil society.
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What is different is that barbos has greater access to information than the general public in Russia, so he is easily able to see the many articles debunking the rumor.
 
Copernicus said:
What is different is that barbos has greater access to information than the general public in Russia, so he is easily able to see the many articles debunking the rumor.
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But whether or not he can actually ackowledge that online, I think there is great merit in nswering his questions and claims for all of the OTHER people who can’t post but would benefit from seeing the debunking.

I would not be surprised if many people in russia have to seek out information by reading and hoping someone else asks their question so they don’t have to type it.
 
Rhea said:
But whether or not he can actually ackowledge that online, I think there is great merit in nswering his questions and claims for all of the OTHER people who can’t post but would benefit from seeing the debunking.
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I agree, and that is why my post contained those links to debunk his false claim about Zelensky's Florida mansion. It would be foolishly dangerous for a Russian citizen to post anything here that criticized the Russian government, but I doubt that there are many readers here other than barbos who need to have the credibility of his claims debunked. I remembered something about the leaked documents that accused Zelensky of stashing money in offshore banks, but I didn't remember the nonsense about him being worth billions and owning a mansion in Florida. So I looked it up and ran into a whole slew of fact checking sites giving it a false rating. It ate up a few news cycles last year.
 
TV and credit cards said:
Popular Mechanics. I've been swallowing their propaganda since I was a tyke. After Mad, it was the next magazine I would curl up on the drugstore floor with.

So...
The Truth About Russia’s ‘Hypersonic’ Kinzhal Missiles

In aerospace circles, though, the term “hypersonic” is used more specifically for vehicles which can maneuver freely at over Mach 5 inside Earth’s atmosphere—not for those that can only make minor course corrections.
Click to expand...
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Exactly. Going fast but not maneuvering simply makes a narrow intercept basket but doesn't make it all that hard to shoot down. Fast and evasive would be pretty much impossible to shoot down but nobody's got that--too much drag, too much heat. The closest the world has seen to fast and evasive is the SR-71 and note that parts of that were red hot even at Mach 3 and at that speed it had a turning radius of 100 miles--hardly evasive (although useful because in that realm the missiles performed even worse.) It was more the electronics on the bird that protected it and the fact that only second-rate powers ever tried to shoot at it. I'm pretty sure that if Russia had tried Gorgons they could have hit it even with a conventional-tipped version. (Gorgon = Russian copy of the Sprint.)
 
TV and credit cards said:
Popular Mechanics. I've been swallowing their propaganda since I was a tyke. After Mad, it was the next magazine I would curl up on the drugstore floor with.

So...
The Truth About Russia’s ‘Hypersonic’ Kinzhal Missiles

In aerospace circles, though, the term “hypersonic” is used more specifically for vehicles which can maneuver freely at over Mach 5 inside Earth’s atmosphere—not for those that can only make minor course corrections.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Exactly. Going fast but not maneuvering simply makes a narrow intercept basket but doesn't make it all that hard to shoot down. Fast and evasive would be pretty much impossible to shoot down but nobody's got that--too much drag, too much heat. The closest the world has seen to fast and evasive is the SR-71 and note that parts of that were red hot even at Mach 3 and at that speed it had a turning radius of 100 miles--hardly evasive (although useful because in that realm the missiles performed even worse.) It was more the electronics on the bird that protected it and the fact that only second-rate powers ever tried to shoot at it. I'm pretty sure that if Russia had tried Gorgons they could have hit it even with a conventional-tipped version. (Gorgon = Russian copy of the Sprint.)
 
Loren Pechtel said:
The closest the world has seen to fast and evasive is the SR-71
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Well, not really. The definition of "fast and evasive" is contextual, so the world has seen many other such aircraft.

The Mosquito B mkIV was certainly a candidate in WWII.

Like the Blackbird, it was mostly operating at an altitude the enemy struggled to reach.

It's not a new phenomenon.
 
ISW said:
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated on May 20 that the United States may agree to transfer modern combat aircraft to Ukraine, including the F-16, on the condition that Ukraine does not use them to strike Russian territory.
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Emphasizing that they are only permitted to destroy half of the Crimean bridge.
 
TV and credit cards said:
ISW said:
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated on May 20 that the United States may agree to transfer modern combat aircraft to Ukraine, including the F-16, on the condition that Ukraine does not use them to strike Russian territory.
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Emphasizing that they are only permitted to destroy half of the Crimean bridge.
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That's fine. Just destroy the bit in the middle.
 
https://theins.ru/en/society/261905

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Insider_(website)

"1984 is selling like hotcakes" as are others that are best sellers and prominently displayed in Russian bookstores. There are those who wish to be informed. Wish to remain grounded in reality. Wish to send a message to their government they are not being fooled.

The truth is available in Russia. The Russian government does not have the stranglehold over the internet some might assume it has. Unlike China, the Russian government never put the infrastructure in place to so closely monitor it's citizens.
 
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