comment: >
  
  Only blown up so that NATO analysts don't discover that the tail rotor is pedal-powered, and, you know, all the illegally imported western parts.
context: Glad it's official. >
  
  5 measly drones. Ladies and gentlemen, the second army of the world. >
  
  They’re not even the second best army in Ukraine at this point! >
  
  4th best, next to foreign legion and ant pile # 3. >
  
  It was speculated waaaaay back (Late February) that it was a potential reason why the ground forces of the invaders didn't seem to have any air support.
  
  Another potential explanation is that the VKS are not confident in their capacity to safely deconflict large-scale sorties with the activity of Russian ground-based SAMs operated by the Ground Forces. Friendly-fire incidents by ground-based SAM units have been a problem for Western and Russian air forces alike in multiple conflicts since 1990. Running joint engagement zones in which combat aircraft and SAM systems can engage enemy forces simultaneously in a complex environment without friendly-fire incidents is hard; it requires close inter-service cooperation, excellent communications and regular training to master. So far, Russian forces have shown extremely poor coordination across the board, from basic logistics tasks, to coordination of airborne assaults with ground forces activity and arranging air defence cover for columns on the move. In this context, it might be the case that the decision was made to leave the task of denying the UkrAF the ability to operate to the ground-based SAM systems, with the explicit understanding that this would be instead of large-scale VKS air operations. However, once again, this is not a sufficient explanation in itself, since given the limited fighter and SAM assets available to Ukrainian forces at this stage, the VKS could still have conducted large-scale sorties against key targets at pre-arranged times, during which Russian SAMs could be instructed to hold their fire. >
  
  How the fuck do they not have effective IFF in 2021?
  The last time the US shot down their own place looks like it might be 1991, and they've fought actual wars since, albeit one sided.
  It's insane that even corrupt Russia has their shit this out of order, particularly because this is the kind of shit that foreign buyers expect to work. >
  
  Patriots shot down a couple coalition fighters in 2003 >
  
  690 today. Still higher than average. Some pretty heavy fighting these last few days >
  
  I feel like 8 tanks is the most I’ve seen in awhile. >
  
  They seem to be keeping the tanks further back and using them as artillery instead of pushing forward and using them for assaults.  Because those assaults seem to end up with a lot of scrap metal for their efforts.  Praise be, Saint Javelin. >
  
  Any source for that? >
  
  It’s unclear how many tanks are used this way, but already some weeks ago, Russian milbloggers were having an argument whether using tanks as artillery was a good idea or not.
  The context was that they were being used that way. >
  
  Was the last dude the one who was just going to launch missiles all the time? I can't remember. >
  
  Well he did launch missiles all the time. Just the ukrainians failed to be impressed.