Ukraine struck Russia's largest oil refinery, located in the city of Omsk, on Monday, marking what its forces say was its furthest-ever drone attack in the war.

The Omsk facility, which processes about 21 million tons of oil a year, is in Western Siberia and about 1,700 miles from Ukrainian territory — roughly the distance between Los Angeles and Houston.

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[–] 113 points 2 months ago (6 children)

And the greatest and second largest army of the world, didn't even notice a few foreign drones traveling 1700 miles across their land! I wonder who's gonna fall out of a window for this.

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    [–] 52 points 2 months ago (35 children)

    Im a little out of the loop, why are they suddenly able to do this now? What changed in their capabilities?

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  • [–] 115 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    From what I read a few days ago one of the conditions for US aid under biden was that Ukraine make no strikes on russian soil. When trump pulled all the aid to Ukraine it was a huge blow, but also took the leash off.

    After that all they had in their way was developing the actual drones and techniques to make the strikes, as well as planning them.

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  • [–] 66 points 2 months ago

    As far as I know, the condition was that US (nor NATO) weapons can't be used on attacks to Russian soil. That's one part why Ukraine has basically done a world record speedrun on native drone production. No one has (nor can) deny them from using their own weapons how they see fit.

    Removing stupid limitations on how they can hit back has helped, but that was mostly for short(ish) range missiles.

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  • [–] 82 points 2 months ago (15 children)

    Ukraine has developed very impressive drone technology in a very short time. It is expected that multiple nations will actually try to make deals to acquire Ukrainian drones at the current NATO summit because they are so good now. So Ukraine is no longer dependent on others to sell them drones. They‘re selling them now.

    For example, these drones can use terrain as guidance, so GPS isn’t required for navigation. This also allows them to fly at a very low altitude, avoiding Russian air defense. They’re also very resistant to jamming and have advanced autonomous capabilities, so they can “finish the job” on their own if the link to their operator is severed. Also, they’re very cheap, so it’s possible to overwhelm Russian defenses by swarming them.

    In summary, they‘ve developed incredible killing machines that are able to act autonomously, which is very good for them right now but probably not very good for humanity in the long run.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    In summary, they‘ve developed incredible killing machines that are able to act autonomously, which is very good for them right now but probably not very good for humanity in the long run.

    It's possible that this becomes the new "mutually assured destruction" we had back in the 20th. Basically, a cold war brought on by drones instead of nukes. It could mean a near-future of peace, however uneasy. I can't say that living with the looming propagandized threat of the USSR was good, but I think it was a far sight better than being in an active shooting war with them.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    probably not very good for humanity in the long run.

    Eh. C'est la vie. We had a good run.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    There was a Black Mirror episode featuring the Boston Dynamics "Dog" robot thing with a machine gun on it, and hunting people down, they are terrifying. It's like being hunted by a zombie tbag doesn't eat or sleep or get tired and won't stop.

    Flying drones are a whole new level of scary beyond that.

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  • [–] 59 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    They've been specifically targeting Russian Air defenses for awhile now forcing them to spread what little they do have even more. Since NATO have been pussies about providing them long range precision munitions they've had to spend time to develop their own cruise missiles like the Neptune and Flamingo the latter of which has entered regular production and has a range of 3000km.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-5_Flamingo

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    They basically reinvented the Nazi V1 with their Flamingo, and although only small % get through, it's devastatingly accurate against refineries.

    Meanwhile, Russia uses the old Nazi strategy of launching very expensive rockets at apartments with civilians in cities, doing 0 strategic damage to Ukraine war capabilities, just like the Nazi V1 and later V2 was used and was relatively useless despite its high price.

    Oh, and Ukraine can shoot at almost all Russia's refineries and weapons factories, but Russia can't do it back because Ukrainian can always import from refineries and factories in France, Germany, etc, beyond the NATO border...

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    [–] 44 points 2 months ago (25 children)

    We need some research into how effective drone strikes against refineries are to stop climate change. Are they a net gain in carbon emissions, considering the cost of manufacture and the prevented emissions?

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  • [–] 31 points 2 months ago (13 children)

    You need to cut demand. If the price goes up, refineries are just build elsewhere.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago

    In many cases it's cheaper to replace it with green alternatives. The refineries have competition from windmills, solar plants, etc. It's not a given that new refineries will fill the gap in the market that destroyed refineries leave.

    I do expect the destruction of refineries to be more positive for the climate than if they had continued producing. Especially if you factor in the demand for reliable supply and strategic availability of energy.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    Gotta make it worse.

    There's the emissions from while it's on fire plus some of the chemicals in it are worse after being burned like that then in regular emissions. Or become other environmental issues on their own once released/burned.

    Then the emissions from building a new one.

    It's so much better to just shut it down because no one needs it than blow them up

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    [–] 26 points 2 months ago (13 children)

    TIL Siberia is way bigger than I expected. I knew it was big, but it looks like it’s more than half of Russian landmass. It can’t all be the climate I’m picturing, right? Like it borders Kazakhstan, so I figure at least part of it has to have hot summers

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago

    Siberia is actually 3/4ths of Russia's landmass. The northern parts are taiga, which are giant uninterrupted forests. The shores of the Arctic Ocean are mostly tundra. In the southern parts the taiga gives way to steppes.

    In the northern parts the climate has warm but quite short summers and long cold winters. In the southern part, where most of the population lives, they have the same climate as southern Canada/New England just less humid. The Western parts are also covered by warm winds that originate from the Middle East and hence have higher temperatures than their more Eastern areas. For reference in Novosibirsk, which is the largest city the average yearly summer temperatures reach 25 degrees Celsius but temperatures can also spike to as high as 38 degrees.

    So yeah Siberia is not all some barren tundra as most people imagine.

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    [–] 13 points 2 months ago

    Oh, It turns out that what some friends in Russia reported was true. They said they had to queue for about two hours just to buy fuel.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Personally, I say California should be controlled by Australia.

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    [–] 11 points 2 months ago* (8 children)

    I wonder if Ukraine got the idea from Iran?

    I don’t mean that as an accusation, but… well, Iran basically has the world economy’s throat. And I know Ukraine’s drones just got the capability, but Iran had to be a fantastic reminder of how fragile an oil economy is.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    They've been occasionally attacking oil infrastructure since the beginning of the war. Used to be their "allies" asked them to please tone that down a bit. I guess Ukrainians finally stopped giving a shit.

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