I believe Feanor is exactly right. I will respond to some parts of the posts and add a bit of my thoughts on the subject.
This is apparently part 1 of
2 3, lol, due to the wordiness.
In this particular case, I don't see the Ukrainian Air Fporce lying
I believe that part of the comment was made in regard to the general systemic issue. Not the particular case.
Buit they cannot give details. They can;t confirm that it was downed by a Patriot. Such information can be exploited by the Russians. They less you tell others, the better.
I am fairly certain this is having an opposite effect in this case.
Sometimes they are obliged to lie, not only for propaganda, but because the Russians should not know the truth.
The issue with this is that it gets to the point (and I personally believe that point was a very long time ago) when no one (few special cases aside) believes you anymore, especially when your reports contradict what is very obvious. Examples are plentiful: a million-man army, offensive is going well and according to the plan, there is no stalemate, intercepted Kh-22 twice (I think it was), but we don’t have AD capable of such intercepts, and so on. The most recent one would be the
statement by Zelensky that the Russian advances in Pokrovsk direction have slowed down since Kursk invasion. Fool me once… The best strategy, of course, was from the very beginning not to believe a word they say. I really do not understand why some people laugh at the Russian MoD statements, but listen without blinking to the Ukrainian MoD or Zelensky. This is very strange to me.
The thing is that lying should make sense, it should have logic, and not many (ideally none at all) holes in the story, that are apparent and easily exposed. In some cases there should be ambiguity, to create confusion, perhaps, or have an exit for yourself when the tide turns (good politicians are good at this). When instead they make idiotic claims on the regular bases, it isn’t at all the same. And, of course, when you are lying about meaningless stuff, while there are plenty of interested parties from your own side to (maybe half) expose the truth, it is not going to work well for you.
As for the Russians not knowing the truth… In spite of the popular belief, they are not complete idiots and do not severely lack basic capabilities.
The bad news is the dead of the pilot. F16s can be replaced. Not the pilots. They have less pilots than F16s.
This is the worst part about this situation. Not just an F-16 pilot that took an enormous amount of time to train (provided the scope, urgency, and the timeframe of the conflict), where very limited resources and training spots available, but also a commander, a mentor, a media persona (like I said in another post, he was the third most famous pilot in Ukraine). It is a huge loss.
The "good" news is that it was shot down by friendly fire, not by Russians. Russians are waiting for the day when they can organize nation wide celebrations for their first downing of an F16.
We still cannot state with 100% certainty what really took place. For all we know, he could have been in the plane ready for take off when a Russian missile hit it on the ground.
NYT
reported yestersay, citing American military officials, that it isn’t likely that it was a friendly fire incident:
But on Saturday, two senior U.S. military officials said that friendly fire was probably not the cause of the F-16 downing, and that American and Ukrainian investigators were looking at a variety of possibilities. Those could include things like mechanical failure or pilot error.
So we really don’t know what really happened, but can probably safely assume the jet was in the air.
The friendly fire, in this case, can be explained by the intensity of the battle, the number of flying objects, the lack of precedence (no other country in the world has ever had to face such modern missile attack of this scale and to chase so many missiles at once), lack of experience by the pilot and the Ukrainian Air Force.
While I agree with former statement to a degree, Ukraine is a huge landmass and these large aerial attacks by Russia are generally, as was the case the last time, very well spread out across the entire country. So while the number of flying objects is substantial, these raids also generally last several hours. In other words, the intensity is not as what you describe, especially if you take Shaheds out of the equation. This is not to reduce the severity of the situation and achievements of the Ukrainian air forces, by any means, especially with the limited resources in their possession. It really only takes one or two projectiles to create enough confusion and fire at your own aircraft or fail to intercept an incoming projectile.
What I don't understand is that there is no automatic indentification handshake between Patriot rockets and F16s to avoid this...
I don’t understand this either. The same goes for the Russians.
The significances are multiple and evoluates as the events unfold. This was at first an oportunistic operation. Then Ukrainians see what they can do beyond the mediatic success.
This is a bingo, in my opinion. The success is determined by the outcome, which we are yet to see.
While the events are still unfolding, we can clearly see at least three intermediate results. One is of course the media reports and internal and external “peremoga”. This was a great success, but far from perfect. Most articles I read on the subject questioned (at least to some degree) the strategy behind such a move. That was in the beginning. More recently, most not just question it, but suggest that it was not a smart move given the situation in Ukraine. I would still call it a success, but clearly a temporary one and one that could backfire. Social media is sure full of irrelevant posts by the riled up fans, but that has no relevance whatsoever. For instance,
Second, an attempt to convince the western sponsors to allow for their long-range missiles to be used deep inside the Russian territory. This was clearly a failure for now and it doesn’t look like it is going to change in the foreseeable future (I personally doubt it ever will, but you never know). Third is the attempt to draw the Russian troops away from the fronts where the situation is critical. As we all know, this has not only failed but also had the opposite effect.
What you wrote in the part of your post I quoted suggests that there was no solid plan to begin with. And I actually see it that exactly way. I even quoted some of what Zelensky previously said that suggests the same. It is also consistent with many previous actions by the Ukrainian highest command, where the media effect is, if not the main purpose of the operation, extremely important. This one appears to be a huge gamble based on poor planning (beyond immediate stage). When you put all the pieces together, it appears that the plan was based on the media reports over the past long while that were based on the statements of Ukrainians themselves, British MoD, analysts who often appear to lack understanding of the situation in Russia, Russian people, their military structure and available resources within the country. Many examples of such, but poor morale, lack of manpower, inability (whether actual or politically motivated) to use conscripts for the war efforts, lack of Rosgvardia and MVD personnel due to the great majority of them being occupied in the Ukrainian territories Russia had captured or beating people on the streets all over the country in order to suppress the protests and whatever other similar rubbish. All of this indicates a compete lack of understanding or/and ability to build long-term strategy and planning.
t.me
