Image is sourced from this Economist article.
Most of the information in this preamble is from the Cradle; notably here, here, here, and here.
The features of an effective American war (proxy or otherwise) is that it is a) against opponents with much less military power than you; b) with very low American losses; c) with victories you can visibly show off from time to time to justify involvement, and d) with a profit margin beyond merely giving money to military corporations. The war against Yemen was none of those; airplanes tumbled off aircraft carriers, and the navy complained of the hardest fighting conditions in decades. Conquering Yemen for its resources was inconceivable given the terrain, lack of good intelligence, and the strength of Ansarallah, and all that seemed to be visibly harmed were empty patches of desert and civilians.
Apparently, the ceasefire last month merely stipulated that they stop attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea; it said nothing about attacking Israel. Therefore, Yemen is absolutely free to create a new blockade of Israel by just striking their airports and seaports, and all Israel can seem to do is try and bomb them in retaliation, a futile strategy which has failed to produce a military or political change in Yemen for the last decade when many other countries have tried it. And if America directly attacks them in response to attacks on Israel, the ceasefire is off, and expensive equipment will continue to be lost.
Across the strait from Yemen is an interesting array of countries. Egypt's position in this war is well-known, and Somalia is under a kind of US occupation under the guise of fighting terrorism (Trump withdrew most troops, but they were then sent back under Biden). The other three are Sudan, Djibouti, and Eritrea. All three are increasingly being drawn into the anti-imperialist camp, as they cooperate with Iran, Russia, and/or China. Sudan is undergoing a civil war, but the rebels fighting the government are famously backed by the UAE. Djibouti has refused to allow themselves to be a launchpad for US strikes on Yemen.
Eritrea has a fascinating history of flip-flopping between West and East over the past few decades, but has, since 2020, sided with the East. It was one of the five countries to oppose the 2022 UN resolution condemning Russia's war with Ukraine. Eritrea sends two thirds of its exports to China, and Iran has reportedly supplied them with military equipment. If a stronger link could be reforged, then Iran would have significantly less trouble sending military technology to Ansarallah, and to other friendly groups throughout the region.
Naturally, the lidless eye of the imperial core is shifting its gaze onto Eritrea. Meanwhile, Ethiopia - a country that has experienced frequent conflict with Eritrea - is part of BRICS+ and their economy is increasingly reliant on China (as is most countries' economies nowadays). If a permanent resolution between the two could be created, it would be a victory for themselves and the Resistance, and a defeat for America, which thrives on conflict and destabilization.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
view the rest of the comments
news
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
Apologies, I forgot it was new thread time. I've been asked to repost this, so I will:
Confirmed Russian losses due to Ukraine's "Spiderweb" attack on Russian tactical and strategic bombers.
Part 1, Olenya Airbase:
Belaya Airbase:
Total so far:
For a total of 13 aircraft confirmed damaged or destroyed, with 12 of them showing signs of severe damage. Ukraine initially claimed 40, but a success rate of 32.5%, or around 1/3, is nothing to scoff at for an attack like this. There is still potential for more damage to be discovered as more satellite imagery gets released.
I'll discuss the impact on the Tu-95 strategic bomber fleet below in a reply.
To talk about the Tu-95 strategic bomber fleet, first we must look at the number of Tu-95 bombers currently operated by Russia and the variants used. As of 2023, Russia has been assessed to operate 55 Tu-95s. As for variants, 25 of these are MS6 specification, and 30 are either MS16 or MSM specification, as only MS16 specification Tu-95s can be modernised to the MSM standard, for reasons I'll explain below. As of 2020 before MSM modernisation began in earnest, it was assessed that Russia operated 25 MS6 and 30 MS16 specification Tu-95s, hence the numbers above for the 2023 estimates. Source -Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nuclear Notebook.
So what's the difference between the three Tu-95 models in service, the MS6, the MS16 and the MSM? It's all about the missiles they can carry and the functionality. The MS6 and MS16 were built to carry the Kh-55 cruise missile (with both nuclear and conventional variants), with the number being the amount of Kh-55s they can carry. MS6 specification Tu-95s carry 6 Kh-55 missiles on an internal rotary launcher and no missiles externally.
MS16 specification Tu-95s carry these 6 Kh-55 missiles internally, along with an additional 10 Kh-55s on external pylons for a total of 16.
However, the Kh-55 has seen limited use in the Ukraine war due to its low survivability, lacking stealth/low observability features and modern countermeasures and guidance systems. Instead, the Russians have made more extensive use of the more modern Kh-101 subsonic cruise missile (nuclear variant Kh-102), which has these features. However, due to the increased size of the Kh-101, it cannot fit in the internal weapons bays and rotary launchers of the Tu-95. This means that the MS6 specification Tu-95, of which Russia has 25 out of 55, cannot carry the Kh-101 at all due to a lack of external pylons. The MS16 specification Tu-95 can physically carry some Kh-101s externally, but not a load of 10 due to the increased size, I'd estimate a maximum load of 4 with Jerry rigged pylons, and without the full capabilities of the Kh-101 (such as changing target after launch) due to outdated electronics. This is where the MSM specification Tu-95 comes in.
The MSM specification Tu-95 is a full modernisation program, that costs about $50 million per MS16 airframe modified. MS6 airframes cannot be modified to MSM specification as they lack external pylons, the wings were not built to handle such loads. MSM modernisation consists of new engines, avionics, radars, electronic countermeasures, and new external pylons, which allows an MSM specification Tu-95 to carry 8 Kh-101 missiles externally. The increased size of the Kh-101 means a load of 10 externally is no longer possible, the outboard pylons can only hold two Kh-101 missiles each, not three as with the Kh-55. Also, the Kh-101 still does not fit in the internal weapons bays, so even the MSM can only carry the Kh-55 internally. Maximum combined load of an MSM is 14 missiles: 8 Kh-101s externally and 6 Kh-55s internally.
All this is to say that the effect on the strategic bomber force really depends on what variants of the Tu-95 Ukraine destroyed, an MS6, MS16 or MSM. It's impossible to verify which aircraft have been destroyed at this time. MSM aircraft would be the most costly loss, followed by MS16. As for estimates, this is difficult as it's unknown how many of the 30 airframes are MS-16 or MSM. For a Ukraine exclusive force reduction scenario, let's say all 30 are MSM, and all 8 damaged are MSM. That would reduce the maximum Kh-101 salvo from 240 to 176, a 27% reduction in capability. However, such is quite unlikely. I don't think Ukraine exclusively destroyed MSM specification Tu-95s, and I don't think that all 30 potential airframes are at MSM standard. Ukraine could've also destroyed some MS6 airframes.
What could Russia do in the meantime? The could see if they have some old MS16 airframes lying around, about 55 were built, which leaves 25 currently not in service or in boneyards somewhere. However, the cost of bringing back one of these planes back into service, yet alone modernising it to MSM standard would be enormous, much more than the current $50 million to take an already flying MS16 and modernise it to MSM. That brings up the question of if this is even possible, the out of service 25 MS16 airframes might've already been used for spare parts to keep the 30 in service MS16s flying, or they might be in too poor of a condition to ever get airworthy again. It's fair to say that these are permanent losses as Russia no longer makes Tu-95 strategic bombers. As for how long it'll take Russia to make 7-8 new production Tu-160s to replace them, that's anyone's guess, but I'd estimate years, if not over a decade. As for the PAK-DA, the Russian equivalent to the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, it only exists on computer screens at the moment.
Any updates to the aircraft losses?
Just more imagery further confirming these ones, still at 13 for now. The New York Times claims that they've spoken to European and American defence analysts that state there are 20 damaged or destroyed aircraft, and apparently there's an "unreleased video" showing hits on the radomes of two A-50 AWACS aircraft. But I cannot verify what I can't see, so still at 13 for now. Clouds are also making it difficult, hence the use of SAR imagery, the black and white images.
One of the Tu-95s destroyed had the registration RF-94257, Bort No. "22" Red, named Chelyabinsk. It appears to be an MS6 specification Tu-95, photos of it show no external pylons of any kind. Here's it flying in happier days.
Another Tu-95 that was destroyed does appear to have the external pylons visible from the top, peeking out from under the right wing. I've circled it in yellow. The location matches exactly with the location of the outboard underwing pylons. Likely an MSM specification Tu-95.
If I see anything new I'll post it.