Noticeable contributions to a collapse of Putin's military in Ukraine. Bad naval fleet doctrine, backward space assets, and unmotivated commanders
The easiest one to ascertain is the woeful spectrum of Russian space assets: FTR
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The maximum resolution of the Persona satellites is believed to be 50 centimeters per pixel
By comparison, the best American spy satellites, called Keyhole, are estimated to have a resolution of around 5 centimeters per pixel.?
NEXT:
Data Overload
Another problem is data processing, according to Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian armed forces and a senior fellow at the?UN?Institute for Disarmament Research in?Geneva.
“It’s one thing to have satellites, it’s another thing to be able to use them. You need a system that will allow you to quickly transfer information from satellites to the right people who will process it and transfer it to people responsible, for example, for target designation,” he?said.
“The fact that Russia has some satellites still flying does not mean that such a system exists, and if it exists, in the case of Russia it is difficult to say how good or bad it is,” Podvig?added.
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OMG, the Pixel resolution sucks, and also no coordinated system of integrating data from surveillance platforms. Not to mention CLOUD cover defeats Russian orbiting assets.
See this
https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20220412-another-problem-for-russia-in-ukraine-effective-satellites-are-few-and-far-between
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Another Problem for Russia in Ukraine: Effective Satellites Are Few and Far Between
By Mark Krutov Sergei Dobrynin
Published 12 April 2022
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The Russian forces have faced many problems in Ukraine. A big item on the list of problems: satellites — there are too few of them, and too few with high-quality capabilities. According to experts and open-source information, Russia has long been saddled with a small and inadequate fleet of communications and surveillance satellites that in many cases rely on either outdated technology or imported parts that are now harder to come by due to Western?sanctions.
By all accounts, Russia’s war on Ukraine isn’t going?well.
The estimated death toll among Russian soldiers is about the same as Soviet losses for the entire 10-year Afghan war. Russian forces have failed to achieve strategic goals such as taking Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, or the major port city of Mariupol. More than two-thirds of Russia’s battalion tactical groups — its basic fighting units — have been deployed. Its forces have been plagued by major interoperability and communication?failures.
Another big item on the list of problems:?satellites?— there are too few of them, and too few with high-quality?capabilities.
According to experts and open-source information compiled by?RFE/RL, Russia has long been saddled with a small and inadequate fleet of communications and surveillance satellites that in many cases rely on either outdated technology or imported parts that are now harder to come by due to Western?sanctions.
Ukraine has no satellite fleet of its own. But it has benefited greatly not only from the unprecedented amount of weaponry and military equipment that the United States has supplied, but also from an unprecedented amount of intelligence, including real-time data on Russian troop?movements.
It’s unclear if that includes high-resolution imagery from spy?satellites.
But in any case, a proliferation of Western technological developments has resulted in an explosion of high-quality, real-time satellite imagery available not only to military intelligence but also private, commercial companies. Russia has virtually none of?that.
“In principle, Russia is already practically blind in orbit, ” said Bart Hendrix, a Brussels-based analyst and expert on Soviet and Russian space?programs.
According to a database maintained by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a respected?U.S.?nongovernmental organization, Russia currently has around 100 military or dual-purpose satellites. Nineteen of them are classified as remote sensing satellites, with technology allowing either optical photography or radio signal surveillance. The others serve other?purposes.
Resolution Matters
Russia has two optical reconnaissance satellites in orbit now, called Persona, Hendrix said, but they were launched between seven and nine years ago, meaning they may be near the end of their working?life.
Adding further to the problem: The maximum resolution of the Persona satellites is believed to be 50 centimeters per pixel, Hendrix?said.
By comparison, the best American spy satellites, called Keyhole, are estimated to have a resolution of around 5 centimeters per pixel. At that resolution, the letter “V” which is being painted on the roofs of Russian military vehicles operating in Ukraine would be easily and clearly visible from the typical altitude where a spy satellite was?orbiting.
Commercial satellite companies like Maxar and Planet typically have a?maximum resolution?of around 15?centimeters.
“The Americans have at least five Keyhole-12 satellites, the Italians, the French and the Spaniards have their own satellites, there are an order of magnitude more,” Hendrix told?RFE/RL.
Russia has also lagged behind in building and deploying remote-sensing satellites whose radars can see through cloud cover, unlike optical?satellites.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists’ database, Russia has only one confirmed?radar satellite in operation, called Kondor. It was launched in 2014, and with an expected lifespan of five years, it may have already ceased to be?operational.
In February, Russia’s space forces?launched another satellite, dubbed Kosmos-2553 or Neutron. Little is known about its purpose or capabilities, though it was built by Mashinostroyeniye, a Moscow military research institute which specializes specifically in radar-sensing?satellites.
“If Neutron is a radar satellite, then this is the first such launch in almost 10 years,” Hendrix?said.
“In terms of radar satellites, Russia also lags behind?NATO?by an order of magnitude,” he?said.
GPS,?GLONASS
The world’s most dominant system for positioning technology is the U.S.-built platform known simply as the Global Positioning System, or?GPS.
The technology is publicly available, and widely used in everything from navigation systems to handheld smartphones. But because it is owned and operated by the?U.S.?government, Russia has long chafed at the system, and sought to build an alternative, known as?GLONASS.
But for the?GLONASS?network to be fully functional, it needs 24 satellites. Russia currently has only 23 deployed, and several of them are nearing the end of their lifespan in?orbit.
Russia has struggled to build and launch new units for the?GLONASS?network in part because of the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in?2014.
Experts said up to 90 percent of the electronics — which need to be resistant to space radiation that can quickly destroy sensitive equipment — used in the next generation?GLONASS?K-1 satellites are imported. Russia has tried to design and manufacture homegrown replacement parts, but the result was a satellite that was twice as heavy as the previous models and it has yet to be launched into?orbit.
“Half of the?GLONASS?satellites can fall out [of orbit] at any moment. In principle, the failure of the first three or four will only affect the accuracy in a certain area. But for normal coverage of the territory of Russia, about 18 units are needed,” said one expert who worked in Russian and European aerospace industry and asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive industry?matters.
“If the launch trend is not fundamentally changed, the?GLONASS?system will fall apart over the next few years,” he?said.
Further complicating matters: Russia’s next generation of military launch rockets — the heavy-lift Angara 5 — has been plagued by problems. It has been used in only three launches since?2014.
Data Overload
Another problem is data processing, according to Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian armed forces and a senior fellow at the?UN?Institute for Disarmament Research in?Geneva.
“It’s one thing to have satellites, it’s another thing to be able to use them. You need a system that will allow you to quickly transfer information from satellites to the right people who will process it and transfer it to people responsible, for example, for target designation,” he?said.
“The fact that Russia has some satellites still flying does not mean that such a system exists, and if it exists, in the case of Russia it is difficult to say how good or bad it is,” Podvig?added.
“Even the Americans aren’t able to cope with this task,” he said. “I don’t see any evidence that Russia is successfully solving this task in the war with?Ukraine.”
Written by Mike Eckel based on reporting by Mark Krutov and Sergei Dobrynin of?RFE/RL’s Russian Service. Mike Eckel is a senior correspondent reporting on political and economic developments in Russia, Ukraine, and around the former Soviet Union. Mark Krutov is a correspondent for?RFE/RL’s Russian Service. Sergei Dobrynin is one of the leading investigative journalists in Russia.This?article?is reprinted with permission of?Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?(RFE/RL).
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In a word, the Russians suck at getting quality visual and orbiting platform data in from the sky from Ukraine. CHECK
How about this one ? The Russian fleet way of war? Spoilers alert THEIR FLAGSHIP in the Black sea is SINKING: I.e,. in the black sea, a US-Russian naval war would in full combat mode lead to the Russian Navy being sunk within an HOUR.
See this:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/how-would-the-russian-navy-fight-in-a-full-scale-conflict
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How Would the Russian Navy Fight in a Full-Scale Conflict?
Slava-class cruiser Moskva conducts a live-fire exercise with a P-1000 Vulkan anti-ship missile in the Black Sea (Courtesy Russian Ministry of Defense)
PUBLISHED APR 11, 2022 3:21 PM BY?CIMSEC
?[By Michael B. Petersen]
How might Russian maritime forces be brought to bear against the United States and its allies? This question is particularly critical as?fears of inadvertent escalation?in Ukraine increase. Understanding the answer requires a close reading of what Russian military theorists themselves write about warfare, matched with an examination of maritime geography; combat power; and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR-T). Constraints in all of these areas mean that rather than solely seeking out targets at sea for a series of navy-on-navy fights, Russian maritime forces are likely to be more effective at operations that focus on striking “critical objects” on land rather than ship-to-ship combat at sea.
Many analyses of Russian naval warfare focus on the concept of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD). These?valuable studies?nevertheless do not discuss Russia’s ability to fight at the theater level. A broader assessment at this level is necessary in light of?renewed suggestions?that Russia may seek to close the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap or English Channel, or engage in a?“Fourth Battle of the Atlantic” over sea lines of communication.
The Russian Federation Navy’s Wartime Tasks
Understanding the navy’s role first requires a basic grasp of Russian conflict periodization. The two most critical periods in Russian military thought are the “Threatening Period” (“Ugrozhayemyy Period,”) and the “Initial Period of War” (“Nachal’nyy Period Voiny”). In contemporary Russian military philosophy, the Threatening Period is generally characterized as a short, sharp crisis potentially leading to war, while the Initial Period is characterized by decisive, rapid, joint, military, political, and cyber operations designed to achieve primary objectives or enable follow-on operations.
The Ministry of Defense has assigned?several tasks?to the Russian Navy in the Threatening Period. They include:
Given the Russian General Staff’s?philosophical emphasis?on preemptive operations, the Navy is also required to be able to rapidly shift to offensive and defensive combat operations when ordered. This is generally considered the start of the Initial Period of War.
In the last decade, Russian naval thinkers have emphasized the importance of land attack against critically important targets (or “objects”), especially in the Initial Period. Its?official doctrine?notes that one of its roles is “to attack the critically important ground-based facilities of the adversary, without violating, until a certain moment, its national sovereignty.” A crucial wartime objective is “destruction of enemy’s military and economic potential by striking its vital facilities from the sea.” This is a concept known in some circles as “the fleet against the shore.”
This is not to minimize the more traditional need to?destroy naval targets at sea. For example, an?influential article?in the General Staff’s journal?Military Thought?highlights attacks against “maritime carriers that are the global strike assets” and “maritime components of the U.S. national [missile defense] system”). Thus a combination of strikes against critical targets afloat and ashore are at the core of a naval cost imposition strategy.
Indeed, despite the West’s analytic emphasis on A2/AD, Russian naval warfighting philosophy does not focus exclusively on sea control or denial. Instead, it emphasizes cost imposition ashore and afloat via strikes against targets selected for their?critical strategic value. Russian naval strategists blend both, attempting to both limit damage and impose cost.
The Tyranny of Geography
While geography offers Russia certain advantages in the littorals and so-called “Near Seas” (a term rarely defined, but generally understood as laying up to 300 nautical miles off shore), as a factor in warfighting against distant targets, geography presents Russian forces with significant challenges. The long-standing geographical concept of a “loss of strength gradient” is useful here. This is a unit of competitive power that is lost per some unit of distance from home shores. In short, relative military strength changes with distance. In Russia’s maritime domain, this loss of strength gradient is particularly relevant at the operational level of war because of capacity limitations and the broad failure to secure overseas alliances or bases.
Russian warfighting in its littoral and Near Sea regions is based around a densely layered and redundant network of land-based sensors, jammers, decoys, land-based missiles, and tactical fighters. As it moves into the Far Sea zone and distant “World Ocean,” (both roughly over 300-400nm from Russia) the military’s loss of strength gradient begins to take hold as the potential volume of contested geographic space increases and available sensors decrease. Larger areas require higher-volume over-the-horizon search capabilities coupled with large numbers of survivable oceangoing warships. Both are in?limited supply?in the Russian Navy.
Moscow has successfully built lines of smaller and less complex naval platforms that are expected to defend its near seas in conjunction with shore-based assets. The smaller size of these ships limits their range and survivability, confining their anti-ship capabilities to local waters. But many are nevertheless equipped with the Kalibr land-attack cruise missile, capable of performing a theater strike role against targets ashore nearly 1,000 miles away.
Larger platforms, especially large surface combatants and nuclear-powered submarines based in the Northern and Pacific Fleets, have?greater range and survivability. In the near term, however, they suffer from?severe order of battle constraints. If Moscow draws off SSNs to defend its strategic nuclear ballistic missile submarines, then the navy’s fighting strength in the Far Sea and World Ocean is may be limited to three to five submarines in the North Atlantic, for example (an area comprising some 6.4 million square miles), and two or three in the vast Pacific.
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Over-the-Horizon ISR
Over-the-horizon (OTH) ISR, an essential element of open-ocean warfare, is perhaps Russia’s most critical maritime warfighting challenge. Its maritime joint combat force has developed extraordinary long-range anti-ship missiles, but they cannot kill what they cannot find. In order to exploit that range, the volume of required search space has exploded. OTH sensors capable of transmitting target-quality data to shooting platforms have lagged behind this need.
Russian shore-based sensors have?impressive capability?out to a few hundred miles — the Near Sea Zone — but are inadequate for open-ocean targeting. To overcome this, Moscow has constructed a new family of electronic intelligence satellites. The?“Liana” system?of satellites?collects electronic signals?emitted by adversary naval vessels and transmits that information to Russian warships equipped with the proper satellite communications equipment. According to open sources, only one Pion-NKS satellite and three Lotos-S satellites are currently operational. Publicly available?satellite tracking websites?indicate that there may be considerable coverage gaps.
Long-range maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft such as the Tu-142 Bear-F and Il-38 May must fill these gaps. But Russia lacks forward basing, fighter aircraft with similar range, and carrier-based fighter aircraft, making long-range escort of these missions impossible. Unless they are willing to assume extraordinary levels of risk, unarmed reconnaissance aircraft must stay within easy reach of Russian fighter patrols or land-based SAM coverage for their own protection, limiting the ocean area they can safely cover.
Sensors aboard warships and submarines also have critical limitations. For submarines, only under certain conditions will?sonar detections?of surface vessels be possible out to a few dozen miles. Surface platforms can have much greater detection ranges, but lack the endurance and survivability of nuclear-powered submarines. Ship-based ISR presents an ever-increasing risk as it patrols farther away from shore-based air defense. Finally, as Russian analysts themselves?acknowledge, even the most advanced systems are not foolproof against sophisticated adversaries.
Imagining Russian Warfare at Sea
How might these dynamics manifest themselves in a high-intensity, regional or large-scale war in the next two to three years? Combining these military concepts at the operational and strategic level of war with Russian strengths and limitations, and pitting them against a sophisticated adversary such as the United States and NATO, it is possible to gain a sense of the broad contours of such a conflict.
During the Threatening Period, the Russian Navy is likely to begin?dispersing to assigned patrol areas?in the littorals, Near Sea, and Far Sea zones in an effort at crisis deterrence. Ashore, theatre-level Aerospace Defense Forces deployed along maritime frontiers will be brought up to higher states of readiness and possibly deployed from garrisons. The goal of all of these forces would be to threaten “deterrent” or unacceptable damage to the potential adversary.
Given the General Staff’s sensitivities to correlations of forces over time and its emphasis on preemptive warfare, Moscow may initiate hostilities if it believes that deterrence is failing. Rapid, decisive strategic aerospace operations, or strategic operations for the destruction of critically important targets (SODCIT), are key elements of potential campaigns in the Initial Period. Yasen and Yasen-M SSGNs are especially crucial in this regard, and may be required to?attack military-industrial facilities, headquarters, and C2 nodes. Importantly, with only two or three potential submarines in this class in the near term, order of battle shortfalls place limitations on Russia’s ability to execute this mission, but given targeting limitations against naval targets, land attack is a key area of emphasis.?
The navy will likely comprise one component of a larger effort to achieve local superiority during this period. For example, in a hypothetical conflict in Europe or East Asia, the Initial Period may be characterized by an intense campaign against targets in places such as?Norway, Romania, and Poland in Europe, and perhaps in Japan in East Asia. This campaign may form part of a larger effort to conduct theater-wide attacks on?strategic targets?with precision standoff weapons. Put another way, Russia may attempt to “expand” its adversary’s relative geography by pushing its opponents out of bases closer to Russia, forcing a more costly application of resources, while a nation like the U.S. may attempt to “shrink” its own by using standoff strike in order to bring follow-on military power forward.
Russian?Long Range Aviation (LRA)?bombers firing long-range precision-guided munitions from sanctuary may be more dangerous than the navy’s limited number of cruise-missile shooting submarines and their relatively small potential salvo size. Nevertheless, modern Kalibr-capable vessels should not be dismissed. Even if “bottled up” in their home waters in the Barents, Baltic, or Black Seas,?smaller vessels?can still strike most of northern, central, and eastern Europe. These attacks can have a decisive political effect on the course of a conflict.
Moving, uncooperative adversary naval targets are a far more difficult targeting problem. Large naval platforms in the Northern and Pacific Fleets, dispersed in the Threatening Period, may attempt to overcome open-ocean ISR shortcomings by lying in wait near maritime choke points. Though limited in number, nuclear-powered submarines play a crucial role in both offensive cost imposition and defensive damage limitation by seeking out these vessels before they get into striking range of Russian shores.
This is where the geographic loss of power gradient may affect Russia’s adversaries. If Russia can successfully eliminate forward air basing, the U.S and its partners must invest greater resources to?move large amounts of combat strength?forward. If the U.S. Navy must come forward, the searchable volume of ocean shrinks proportionately. Surface ships, including carrier strike groups, could be exposed to attacks from strike aircraft, other surface ships, and any submarines that may be lying in wait. Counter-ISR-T and operational maneuver techniques are likely to be the difference between life and death. Given these conditions, it is possible that the relative power gradient may rebalance if a U.S. carrier strike group or other platforms come forward.
This stage of warfare may be where Russia can impose the most cost. Large Russian surface combatants will provide air defense and surface strike while smaller frigates and corvettes, many equipped with Kalibr anti-ship cruise missiles, will conduct anti-surface warfare. But given limitations in numbers of missiles on board and the absence of at-sea reloads, an equal contributor in the effort to dole out punishment on any adversary naval forces that come forward will be made by land-based strike aircraft supported by tactical fighters and shore-based missile systems.
Implications for Analysis and Planning
This analysis has several implications. First, arguments about threats to Trans-Atlantic SLOCs require much greater analytic clarity because they run the risk of warping strategic realities. Given Russian capacity and OTH ISR challenges, it seems likely that points of embarkation and debarkation — the?ends?of the SLOCs, not the vast middle of the SLOCs — are at risk, primarily because it is comparatively easier to destroy a ship in port than it is to do so at sea. The circumstances of geography and the state of their own military modernization would likely drive Russian naval forces in this direction.
The majority of Russian naval effort would likely be dedicated to inflicting?carefully dosed conventional damage?effects in an effort to disorganize responses, interrupt logistics flows at fixed points, and generally impose “deterrent” or “unacceptable” damage that coerces an adversary to sue for peace on terms favorable to Russia. Thus, the bulk of offensive activity is likely to be on landward, fixed targets as part of a joint campaign aimed at cost imposition. Long-range precision guided munitions may be used either from the sanctuary of distant bastions or from the far seas. Russian joint assets are less likely to dedicate the lion’s share of resources for long and frustrating hunting missions for moving targets in a very large ocean. Such attacks, while possible, are far more ISR-intensive and tactically complex.
Concerns about Russia’s purported ability to threaten targets south of the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap (GIUK Gap) are probably inflated. While Russia may?technically?be able to close the GIUK Gap or even the English Channel for a time, the likelihood of such an attempt is low. Rather, Russian warfighting strategy is partially shaped by its need to minimize its asymmetric disadvantages in warship capacity and ISR. In short, Russia still lacks the open-ocean capacity necessary to meaningfully overcome the geographic loss of strength gradient and successfully conduct ship-to-ship fighting in the central Atlantic at a scale to defeat the United States and NATO.
Even so, this analysis also suggests that the U.S. and NATO should not ignore investments in key future capabilities. Continued development in ISR and counter-ISR capabilities will remain essential. But counter-ISR will be no guarantee against attack. As Russia fields more advanced sensors to feed combat platforms equipped with new hypersonic anti-ship missiles, avoiding detection and shooting down inbound missiles will become ever more difficult, requiring more investments in so-called “soft-kill” technologies that seduce missiles to strike false targets. In addition, if Russia is able to successfully expand the maritime geography, U.S. and NATO partners are likely to require greater investments in aerial refueling to ensure that tactical combat aircraft are able to transit and fight at long distance.
Finally, it is worth remembering that any wartime adversary of Russia gets a vote. Too much of what passes for analysis of the Russian military, particularly its maritime warfighting capabilities, is carried out in the absence of what a sophisticated adversary may do with its own force. War is a dynamic interaction. Moscow’s potential opponents have effective and powerful militaries of their own, and are developing sophisticated concepts to deter or defeat Russia. Any clear-headed assessment of Russian maritime warfighting must take both perspectives into account.?
Dr. Michael Petersen is director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute and Holloway Advanced Research Program at the U.S. Naval War College.?The opinions here are solely the author’s and do not represent those of the U.S. Navy or Department of Defense.
This article appears courtesy of CIMSEC and may be found in its original form?here.
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This above may be too kind an assessment: See this
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1595838/Naval-cruiser-moskva-ukraine-russia-war-damage-fire-ont/amp
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The Russian naval cruiser Moskva has been struck and is on fire?(Image: Getty)
MOSCOW has confirmed the Russian naval cruiser Moskva is "on fire" on the Black Sea, after reports Ukraine claimed striking the warship.
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Two Ukraine Neptune missiles did it. Never mind, and this is the RUSSIAN Flagship for the Black sea!
NEXT
Unmotivated commanders of Russian forces. There have been SIX Generals on the Russian side killed, in over 40 days of fighting and this is showing up in
https://goodwordnews.com/russian-army-poorly-led-and-unmotivated-in-ukraine-ex-general-says/
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Russian army ‘poorly led’ and ‘unmotivated’ in Ukraine, ex-general says
Eleon4 weeks ago?180
Former US Major General James Marks said in a CNN interview on Saturday that the Russian military was “poorly led” and its soldiers were “unmotivated” in Ukraine.
“This Russian army which has tried to modernize over the past two decades and has done a pretty good job of getting the right equipment and the right capabilities, but it’s misdirected,” he said. “There’s nothing worse in an organization than shitty leadership and that’s exactly what the Russians flaunt.”
However, the Russians are stepping up their attacks on Ukraine, with Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov saying on Friday that hypersonic Kinzhal missiles were used to hit a military warehouse in the west from Ukraine. The missiles were used for the first time since the war began late last month.
“The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aero-ballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse of missiles and aviation ammunition of Ukrainian troops in the village of Delyatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region,” he said. said, according to the RIA news agency.
Marks explained that the Russian offensive “is not going according to any plan” as the military had key objectives which included taking over the Ukrainian capital of kyiv and Odessa, among others, but these objectives were ” blocked except for the devastation that actually takes place.”
The retired general pointed to some of the shortcomings of Russian troops and added that the soldiers are “unmotivated”.
“They haven’t been able to get out of their vehicles and really exercise and maneuver at a pace and with the momentum they’ve shown they’ve learned something from their training and they’re moving on. now at a defensive posture, which means they’ve peaked,” he said. “They’re at the end of their logistics, they’ve moved to defense, which means they’re incredibly vulnerable and Ukrainians know that.”
On Thursday, a US Pentagon official, who requested anonymity, made similar remarks about the performance of Russian troops in Ukraine, telling reporters that Russian forces appear to be struggling with shortages and commanders have had to struggling to keep their troops in combat.
The Pentagon official also said Russian forces were making minimal progress as they advanced on the ground, while Ukrainian troops continued to resist attacks.
Former US Major General James Marks said the Russian army was “misdirected” and that its offensive “is not going according to any plan”. Above, a destroyed Russian army multiple rocket launcher on the outskirts of Kharkiv on March 16 amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Photo by SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images
The US Department of Defense official said Russian forces are “essentially frozen across the country on multiple axis lines, struggling to resupply, feed their troops, and provide them with arms and ammunition.”
The official also said that Russia currently appears to rely more on so-called “dumb” bombs than using advice-based weapons in its nearly month-long full-scale invasion.
“They clearly weren’t ready for the pushback they received from the Ukrainians,” the Pentagon official explained.
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The equalizer is PUTIN's 6000+ Plus strategic nuclear weapons, FOR NOW: And a ten fold advantage over the USA in terms of battlefield NUKES
quote
How many nuclear weapons does Russia have?
By The Visual Journalism Team
BBC News
President Putin has put Russia's nuclear forces on "special" alert, raising concerns around the world.
But analysts suggest his actions should probably be interpreted as a warning to other countries not to escalate their involvement in Ukraine, rather than signalling any desire to use nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons have existed for almost 80 years and many countries see them as a deterrent that continues to guarantee their national security.
How many nuclear weapons does Russia have?
All figures for nuclear weapons are estimates but, according to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads - the devices that trigger a nuclear explosion - though this includes about 1,500 that are retired and set to to be dismantled.
Of the remaining 4,500 or so, most are considered strategic nuclear weapons - ballistic missiles, or rockets, which can be targeted over long distances. These are the weapons usually associated with nuclear war.
end of quote
ALSO
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/03/putin-has-tactical-nuclear-advantage/
In so many words PUTIN has about 10 times the number of tactical nukes the USA has in European theatres
See this as to the US stockpile
As of 2021,?100 tactical B61 nuclear bombs?are believed to be deployed in Europe under the nuclear sharing arrangement. The weapons are stored within a vault in hardened aircraft shelters, using the USAF WS3 Weapon Storage and Security System. The delivery warplanes used are F-16s and Panavia Tornados.
Russia has ten times the number, IN Europe
So Russia has enormous capacity in terms of wrecking nuclear mayhem tactically, but has badly misfunctioning conventional forces
So what remains the issue ? A little known Russian doctrine as to allegedly "de escalate" in a war by selective use of its NUCLEAR assets. I,.e. use of direct intimidation of winning conventional forces to "back off" from finishing off fumbling Russian conventional forces'
We now have a winner,. If the Dombass offensive still by May 9th fizzles, PUTIN can allegedly "de escalate " by use of TACTICAL nuclear weapons. And this may be the next item of terror this GOD awful war may impinge upon us all. Clear thinking of what we may see if the Dombass offensive stalls, is necessary
After all this is said, we really need to SHUT down the Russian fuel supplies to Europe as soon as possible to NOT incentivize Putin from following through in his final round of beating up on Ukraine. Go to it and realize the stakes
Andrew Beckwith, PhD