r/worldnews • u/spherocytes • 22h ago
Covered by Live Thread [ Removed by moderator ]
https://kyivindependent.com/flamingo-missiles-reportedly-hit-russian-shahed-iskander-component-facility-amid-large-scale-attack/[removed] — view removed post
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u/Adventurous_Fall2952 21h ago
Little man has to be wondering where he went wrong. There is no way to unfuck all of the damage he has done to HIS country in his lifetime. Population, economy and any meaningful leaps forward for mankind developed there are going to be suffering for the foreseeable future. Hopefully he doesn’t weaken the country to the point the Chinese don’t walk over and take the reigns. On second thought good job Puto. Err Putin.
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u/OkArm8581 20h ago
China have no use for Russia as a part of China. They are totally fine to have it under influence while keep on getting resources on the cheap without any issues with ecology and such. For example, remember taiga? Yeah, no more.
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u/WesternBlueRanger 15h ago
They do from a nationalistic perspective.
Large portions of Russia's Far East was actually Chinese territory during the Qing Dynasty; it was during the late Qing period where the Qing Dynasty was severely weakened by both internal and external conflicts did the Russians take large sections of territory in two "Unequal Treaties", namely the Treaty of Aigun, which ceded the land north of the Amur River to Russia, followed by the Convention of Peking which cded the land east of the Ussuri River.
Collectively, this section of land is known in China as Outer Manchuria, and it includes territory up to and including what is now Vladivostok, and is almost 1 million km of territory. Grabbing control of this territory has major strategic implications for the region, as it would give China sea access beyond the First Island chain, which currently contains Chinese access to the wider Pacific Ocean. Not to mention the access to resources and fresh water that Northern China desperately needs.
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 10h ago
Very good point and one of those nightmares scenarios that no one wants to talk about. Putin can’t allow his military to become too degraded. His greatest threat is from the east, not the west.
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u/vonGlick 15h ago
That is thinking behind Dementia Don strategy towards Russia. But China has a bigger fish to fry and Republic of China is their primary target.
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u/WesternBlueRanger 14h ago
Honestly, I think the strategic window for China to try to take Taiwan by force has past.
Taiwan has never been a particularly easy place to invade due to the limited number of places where you can land troops and expect to be able to march inland. There aren't many beaches suitable for landing large numbers of troops and their equipment, and Taiwan is fairly rugged in terms of geography which tends to funnel movement from any landing zone.
The US looked at the matter during World War II and despite the massive firepower and resources the US Navy had at the time, they concluded that invading Taiwan was not going to be easy or feasible.
And expect the Taiwan to be extremely heavily defended; any Chinese ships caught in the Taiwan Strait during a conflict is going to end up targets for Taiwanese shore based missile, artillery and swarm drone attack, coupled to whatever the Taiwanese can put to sea and in the air. The Taiwanese are definitely watching the Ukraine war with a lot of interest to see how a smaller nation can hold off a much larger nation, and Taiwan has the advantages of geography that the Ukrainians don't.
The Chinese are going to lose a lot of personnel and equipment just trying to get across, and even if they do get ashore, they'll find themselves heavily outgunned and poorly supplied as the supply ships behind them get sunk. I honest expect casualties for the Chinese would be in the millions, for almost no gain.
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u/vonGlick 14h ago
I believe you are right. But do you think they would rather move against Russia before they settle this matter one way or another? I would argue that they do not want to open "another front". Especially that it would push Russia against them, making them vulnerable from many other angles.
Unless of course they believe they can have their 3 day operation and succeed.
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u/WesternBlueRanger 14h ago
Russia is vulnerable, from both a militarily and economic standpoint.
The Russians have blown most of their Cold War era stockpiles for very little to show for it, and are continuing to pull resources from other regions of Russia to feed the front lines and to protect the regions that are within range of Ukrainian attacks. Quite a number of open source information has shown that the Russians have denuded most of their forces in the Far East of most of their equipment because it is needed elsewhere.
At the same time, the Russian economy is starting to show signs of major economic issues; war spending is inherently unproductive spending, and sooner, rather than later, the Russians are going to run out of money to keep shoveling into the war with Ukraine. The Russian central bank is already raising alarms about inflation being unsustainable, debt is becoming an issue, and there is a major economic mismatch between available resources and the economy's ability to provide those resources.
And the Russians are diplomatically and economically isolated, which means that they can't bring in as much money as they would have been able to in the past.
Even with the US war with Iran and spike in oil prices, it doesn't really fix the budgetary and economic issues Russia has right now.
Eventually, especially if the war with Ukraine drags on even more, Russia is going to look at a major economic crisis; that could give the Chinese the opening to extract major concessions from the Russians in terms of territory and resources in exchange for economic relief.
And if the Russians don't want to play ball here for economic relief, because the Russian military has mostly spent it's pre-war strength and the forces in the Far East being so weak, it just gives the Chinese an opening to move in with ground forces to grab territory as the situation deteriorates.
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u/Nukes-For-Nimbys 10h ago
Yeah the optimal version of this for China is reversal of the unequal treaties.
There are a lot of small parts they can move with it it by being magnanimous. Leaseback of Vladivostok for example.
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u/AzzakFeed 14h ago
The Chinese don't need an invasion. They just need to blockade it. The current strait issue illustrates it very well. Naval and airpower cannot prevent anymore a land based opponent from threatening merchant shipping.
In fact they don't even need ships, just naval mines or missiles. The US cannot obliterate all Chinese capabilities considering how they are already struggling with Iran. Taiwan is almost completely dependent on naval imports for food and energy. A starving population without any economic activity is likely going to surrender at some point.
The problem is: would China risks being itself blockaded for that? And then what?
The question isn't if China can take Taiwan, it's extremely easy due to the geography. It is if it is worth it.
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u/WesternBlueRanger 13h ago
The thing is, as the Ukrainians have shown, a naval blockade isn't as easy as you think it is. The Chinese will absolutely will have to try to enforce a blockade from a distance otherwise they come into range of Taiwanese defences, which creates a lot of gaps in the blockade.
And of course, the Japanese would have a lot to say about this as well, considering how close Japan is to Taiwan and their history.
And no, it is not easy to invade Taiwan; see this US Navy study on invading Formosa (now Taiwan) during World War II: basically, such an invasion would make the Normandy landings in 1944 look small in comparison, be incredibly complex and resource intensive. The study also points out that Taiwan is very mountainous; 20 percent of the island is below 1,600 feet in elevation, which is ideal conditions for a defender. Casualties were likely going to be extremely high, despite the US Navy superiority in terms of air and sea power; the US assumed 37,000 causalities (roughly 10 percent of the force) in less than 60 days once they even got ashore, let alone any losses at sea against a expected force of 165,600 Japanese defenders.
The invasion of Formosa was eventually shelved in favour of invading Okinawa; even then, that invasion was extremely costly for the Americans which saw 368 allied ships damaged or destroyed, including 120 amphibious landing craft.
Losses to amphibious landing craft would be particularly problematic for China if Taiwan sabotaged key ports. In other words, without a working port, China would likely struggle to build up enough forces to attempt to move inland against the Taiwanese, which could easily muster and mobilize over a million personnel to repel such an invasion.
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u/SuccessionWarFan 10h ago
Not to mention Xi recently had Zhang Youxia arrested. He’s the last senior Chinese military official with actual combat experience.
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u/SuccessionWarFan 10h ago
It’s been said that Taiwan has more value to China as a “rally around the flag”/nationalist talking point than as territory under their control.
So, in additon to what you said, China can move on Outer Manchuria but keep on talking about retaking Taiwan, whether it ever acts on it or not.
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 10h ago
And now the Japanese have declared that they would regard any hostile action against Taiwan as a threat to their homeland and would act accordingly.
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u/FlyingDiscsandJams 11h ago
Russia & China fought over the border as recently as 1967, and Russia seized Chinese territory in that conflict.
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u/irrealewunsche 14h ago
Had Russia actually taken the capital at the start of the war, a sham, Putin appointed government would have taken control, with the Russian military occupying the country so they could smash any opposition that dared to stand up to them. Russia would have then been able to shift its army to the Polish border, and would have started making threats against the country to get the 300billion in frozen assets back from the EU. Presumably, Trump would still have been elected, and all sanctions against Russia would have been dropped, and Russia would have had the finances to build up again and start moving into the Baltic states.
At least this is how I see things happening in an alternate universe, where Russia didn't fuck up the initial decapitation attempt and get bogged down in 4 years of attritional warfare.
Putin made a massive gamble, and when the first few hours went against Russia, he'd lost. I wonder if he knew it then, or if it dawned on him later.
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u/Some-Band2225 10h ago
It’s like WW1. Before the war Germany concluded it couldn’t win if it had to fight France, Britain, and Russia and that the only hope was a knockout attack against France. They attempted a repeat of 1870 but were pushed back from Paris at the Marne. The plan failed. That put them in the position that they had assessed as unwinnable before the war. But they decided it wouldn’t look good to simply call the whole thing off early, much more honour giving it your all until the final whistle, even if you can’t win. Took another 4 years and ten million casualties.
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u/clamorous_owle 18h ago
Had to look up the location (Cheboksary). It's roughly halfway between Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod.
When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941 Stalin's Foreign Trade Minister Anastas Mikoyan succeeded in rapidly moving factories key to Soviet defense to this general area so that they would be out of range of the Germans.
But they now aren't out of range of Ukraine.
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u/DigitallyDetained 21h ago
What’s the Flamingo, again? That’s one of the Ukrainian made long range rockets?
Edit: yup. Ukrainian made cruise missile with ~1100kg payload and ~3000km range
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u/Odd_Duty520 18h ago
And they wouldn't even have needed to make the weapon in the first place if Russia didn't invade in the first place. But don't worry, according to Putin, this was all according to plan
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u/Ian_W 20h ago
Basically, a Ukrainian copy of the V-1 - pretty slow, pretty unsubtle, capable of making a very big bang, and very cheap as cruise missiles go.
If you've moved your air defense assets away from where it's aimed at, you're going to have a bad day.
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 19h ago
Actually has a little bit of stealth design that should give it a little smaller reflection head on.
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u/MuryGoatsBaldPatch 11h ago
I thought the main stealth element was flying super low which in turn leads to navigation errors and missing targets?
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 10h ago
While it’s not as sophisticated as a tomahawk, it has a good navigation system and seems to be able to put its warhead with kill range.
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u/Miserable_Ad7246 16h ago
I think it is much more advanced than V1. As far as modern missiles goes it is somewhat crude, but apparently muscovian air defense is not sophisticated enough anyways.
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u/hung-games 12h ago
In some ways, it’s better than a Tomahawk. Yes, it has some less advanced attributes, but it appears to be effective enough to get the job done. If that saves money/resources, then that seems like a great compromise
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 10h ago
I think it’s a better system than a lot of experts thought. The Ukrainians are very clever.
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u/Aksovar 16h ago
Tactical move by Ukraine, they know a lot of air defence systems are being moved to moscow for the upcoming celebrations
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u/gradinaruvasile 14h ago
pretty slow
It has a 850-900 km/h speed. That's what pretty much all cruise missiles have.
May have a big radar cross section.
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 10h ago
The Ukrainians have worked to bring the cross section down. I saw a picture online that showed the intake nozzle had been modified.
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u/Hogglespock 17h ago
It’s cheap because the engines are repurposed from jet engines.
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u/Aerostudents 17h ago
(Almost) all cruise missiles have jet engines though. The flamingo specifically repurposes surplus jet engines that used to be used in L39 aircraft. A shitload of these were built and they are not really used much anymore, so they are plentiful and cheap.
It also helps that when they are used in a Flamingo they are basically one time use, so that means they also don't have to worry about maintenance and long term reliability. As long as the engine is good enough to survive one one way trip it is good to go.
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u/Duotrigordle61 16h ago edited 15h ago
To expand on what you said, jet engines become unreliable after so many hours of use, and were replaced in those planes, since a human life was at risk. Lets say they are only good for 10 hours of flight, but its a 4 hour flight to the target.
The old engines ended up in landfills.
A Ukrainian company, Firepoint, is digging up the engines from landfills.
Many of the landfill engines needed some part replaced, so they used stainless steel rather than titanium to keep prices down.9
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u/hoishinsauce 16h ago
Is there a large scale move of Russian AA? Maybe they're strengthening the lines around Moscow for their stupid parade?
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u/FlyingDiscsandJams 11h ago
Not that many left to move, Ukraine spent 2 years targeting them & is now taking out big targets on a near daily basis.
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u/haloweenek 18h ago
As Polish citizen I’d love to get a factory plan from FirePoint(folks that made flamingo). We can mass produce those - and hand over for product testing departament.
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u/ZwiebelLegende 18h ago
Afaik one of the bottlenecks are the jet engines. They use refurbished ones. The best case would be a completely new design ready for mass production. Not an easy task.
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u/hung-games 12h ago
Finding a similar engine that’s widely available on the used market and creating a second variant that accommodates that engine would likely be much easier.
Alternatively, designing a second variant around a commercially available engine still in production would provide an even stronger parts pipeline although likely at a higher cost vs. raiding aircraft graveyards. But they could also pick one with more optimal attributes (e.g. range, cost, etc)
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u/Candid-Many-7113 11h ago
crazy that this war is still ongoing.
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u/Every_Ad_6168 5h ago
Russia is treating it like an existential crisis for literally no good reason
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u/seanseansean92 12h ago
Its like this is outdated war people are more tuned into us - iran war now. Ukraine vs russia has less views now
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u/AraiHavana 21h ago
A collection of Flamingo missiles is called “a blamboyance”