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Something to remember is ukrainian planes are russian origin. And one thing they are good is they aren't too picky about quality of airfield they use. They were designed so that track getting hit by bombs is irritation.

If they can keep actual planes hidden and safe it's not too bad.

Albeit wasting best most accurate of hard to replace missiles at non-military targets sure helps. Russian generals are not approaching war from militarily efficient way. Different goal.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Or lose the will to stop supplying them.

This is precisely what I mean about any analysis that ignores politics being a waste of time. You can't have a meaningful discussion of Ukraine's logistics situation without considering the US domestic political factors, specifically the fact that the one thing both US parties agree on is the need to funnel obscene amounts of tax money (and when taxes aren't enough, borrowed money) to defense contractors. Shutting off the contractor money faucet is political suicide and now that US troops are (mostly) out of Iraq and Afghanistan that means billions of dollars to buy weapons for Ukraine. The biggest threat to Ukraine's supply of weapons is the US starting another war, but even then we'd probably just use it as an excuse to borrow a few trillion and hand even more money to those defense contractors.

Holy hell let it rest dude.

The whole no politics thing? I think what would have been more useful is 'no morality'.

Moral statements about things being bad, or worthy or whatever feature in your comms piece. Otherwise you are concerned by what is happening and why. That will have military reasons, consequences of corruption, political objectives, stated personal policies and choices. There are political layers to all of that.

But strip out the moral bit and you can skip saying X,y,z are bad/evil/communists (unless you can show according the the classical definition of communism they are, otherwise, label regimes/poltical parties correctly please) and instead say what people are doing and why.

Rumours.

Russia using S300 systems and antiship missiles to attack ground based targets? Is that plausible? Especially the S-300 being a SAM system?

I know that the Russians have seriously depleted their precision weapon systems. Is there a reliable estimate of how much 'smart' ordnance they have expended against what they may have possessed before the war?

I think the one that hit the shopping centre was positively identified as an anti-shipping missile.

As for the S-300, it’s a big damn SAM, so theoretically could be done; the old Royal Navy Sea Dart SAM had an anti-surface mode, although that was intended for small attack craft. Plus the sea has a lot less clutter to deal with. I’d be a bit more sceptical about that one. Also, if I was the Russians I’d be husbanding those S-300s in case of escalation. They’re one of the big deterrents to western air power and (if the brochure is to be believed) one of the few things with capabilities to deal with cruise missiles and possibly even low observable aircraft.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Rumours.

Russia using S300 systems and antiship missiles to attack ground based targets? Is that plausible? Especially the S-300 being a SAM system?

I know that the Russians have seriously depleted their precision weapon systems. Is there a reliable estimate of how much 'smart' ordnance they have expended against what they may have possessed before the war?

"plausible", in the sense that it COULD be done, and we know it HAS been done a few times, though as the shopping center strike showed, the accuracy of these "precision" weapons when used so far outside of their design envelope is questionable at best (assuming the Russians didn't actually want to strike the centre, and the missile just missed its aim point).

but, like that strike shows, the return on investment is pretty megre and they dont really have the accuracy needed for precision strikes. with the SAM systems in particular, the threat of them is keeping the Ukrainian air force form having much affect on the ground war, and enables russia to make maximum use of its large conventional artillery forces, so burning though their stockpiles of reloads using them as "ersatz GMRLS" seems like a poor choice. using the anti-shipping missiles makes more sense in the context of this war, as theirs not a major naval threat (unless outside forces intervene, in which case all bets are off anyway), and it enables the Russian bomber forces to contribute via use of these stand off munitions.


as to stockpiles? we have no clue. We saw extensive use of precision weaponry in the Russian intervention in Syria, and during the initial days of the war, but the russians seem to have stopped using them. either they are hoarding their remaining stockpiles for a theoretical outside intervention, or they have already expended thier pre-war stockpiles. My money is on the latter, but its impossible to prove at this juncture.

the real intresting question is how easily can they manufacture more? a lot of Russian high tech equipment was dependant on imported components, many of which are no longer available. its quite likely what they have is all they are going to have for quite some time.