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[Duuvian]

https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-gives-us-actor-seagal-top-state-award-humanitarian-work-2023-02-27/
Putin gives U.S. actor Seagal top state award for 'humanitarian work'

[jipehog]

Indeed, who knew he was alive and still coming up with d rated movie plots
Also he gained some weight..

[nenjin]

He's been a bloat sack for years now.

Hopefully his ego swelling up further causes him to explode.

[hector13]

Pretty sure there were rumours flying around he was fighting for the Russians when the war started.

[nenjin]

I doubt it. He "resigned" from the Sherriff's department here in America. He's in his 70s. He moves like a piece of wood. He hasn't been believably athletic since his 40s. So I really doubt he was out in Ukraine humping through the mud and getting shot at. At the end of the day, he has way too much to lose to be playing at mercenary in Europe. Then again, he's such an ego maniac, maybe he doesn't realize that.

[Il Palazzo]

He's a good actor. I liked him in South Park.

[Strongpoint]

Looking at protests in Moldova... Ahh. 2014 flashbacks... Local protestors who don't understand a single word said in Moldavian and who speak Russian with accents common in Russia...

Moldova really should have banned all Russians from coming to the country a year ago, at least a month ago. Something very unpleasant is brewing there.

[Strongpoint]

Among amusing news - Today a domestically-produced Ukrainian drone with a max speed of 150 km per hour crashed 100 km away from Moscow (around 500 km away from the border)

I am confident that NATO's airforce... a single American Aircraft carrier somewhere in the Baltic Sea, would be able to destroy the majority of Russian combat capabilities within a day.

[Telgin]

I was reading about that and was stunned that Russian radar and air defenses weren't able to detect and intercept it much further out.  Maybe drones are somehow harder to spot than I'd expect, but that's pretty embarrassing.

[Lord Shonus]

Defense radar is not an easy task, and a single lone penetrator that's flying low and evasive is the second-worst-case scenario. Before 17 July 1989, that was the primary US plan if they had to send bombers into the USSR.

[nenjin]

I didn't want to comment, but I was wondering about the radar profile of a drone. Then again, defense systems designed to detect missile launches can probably pick up something the size of a drone. But I imagine if it flew low enough, had some decent coating, it could probably avoid detection easier than most/any other aircraft.

If you take Russia as being Russia, and add in the complacency that comes with a now long-running conflict, low morale etc.....it's not too surprising.

What is surprising, is that no one has yet attached a high-yield explosive to them that I know of.

[Lord Shonus]

The systems that detect "missile launches" you're referring to are probably those intended to pick up ICBMs - they detect the massive thermal flare emitted by a booster rocket. Nothing purely terrestrial has that kind of flare, and there's nothing to differentiate a large drone from any other aircraft (or, indeed, most ground vehicles) in this regard. What you need to pick this kind of thing up is ground-based radar, which is far more complex than the neat circles you see on maps would suggest. The first big factor is the Radar Cross Section of the inbound itself, and anything shaped for supersonic flight will inherently be shaped to make this relatively small - not Stealth small, but tiny compared to a big passenger jet or something like a B-52. The second factor is altitude - even with nothing else in the way, the lower you go the more likely you are to have the planet in the way - air search radars have ranges long enough that the horizon is a real problem. Then you have terrain masking - if you have hills and trees and buldings to clutter the scope, picking a little drone out of the mess is hard.

The situation changes significantly if you have a mass strike - a hundred missiles or planes is far more visible than one, even if they're following the same kind of course. Air defense networks are always going to be vulnerable to lone or scattered penetrators in ways that an all-out strike won't get through.

[jipehog]

Indeed. Using low altitudes to stay below enemy radar and using the terrain have been a common tactic to evade detection. This why volley of low-altitude cruise missiles would stress any air defense system. This limitation can be overcome by airborne radar system and why you have NATO fleet of AWACS on Ukraine border to give them early warning of Russia's missiles attacks.

Drones, especially the smaller maneuverable ones is another level of challenge and as far as I know most modern air defense system, including western and USA, can't handle them. I believe Israel, which have a lot of combat experience with every sort of projectile thrown at it including Iranian drones, has one of the most successful AA systems (they also use balloons to enhance detection against lower flying targets) and have recently made anti drone system operational

Otherwise one of the biggest challenges for any AA system is saturation attacks, which what Russia tries todo with Iranian drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defense. Any NATO strike would likely utilize anti-radiation missile that target radars and demolish air defense capabilities. Although I wonder how effective that would be considering the cat and mouse game we see in Ukraine.

[Lord Shonus]

NATO anti-radiation missiles have done superb work in Ukraine, despite being restricted to a portion of their capabilities (everything publicly available plus a lot of common sense suggests that the HARMs are not integrated into Mig targeting systems, and are being used in a "program on the ground, fly to the right general area, and fire" mode. NATO aircraft would be able to operate in a true hunter-killer mode that would be far more effective. That's why Russia has fighters as well as SAMs.

[Devastator]

So to translate this from Putin-speak, I assume we should expect Russia to nuke the Transnistria region for reasons that make sense only to Putin, sometime in the next few days.

I'm not even sure how Transanistra is being sustained, especially as far as Russian 'peacekeepers', since at least this time last year. Surely it cannot be Chișinău International alone, through which the necessary materiel makes it way, even if it suffices for personnel movements. But that probably just shows how little I truly understand about the whole Moldovian situation (outwith the defacto/dejure fragment, landlocked between there an Ukraine).

If by this you mean their weapons of war, it's mostly due to not actually fighting anyone and garage-level mechanics.  In all honesty, if someone wanted to make a tank with plain steel armour in the small city I live in, it could be done.  Can't raise a massive army, but it's far from impossible to maintain their supply of old BTRs.  Oryx keeps a list of their army on the blogsite, too, if you're curious.