With three Russian aircraft downed over the weekend, there’s been some speculation that Ukraine already has some of the F-16s promised to it by NATO members Netherlands, Norway and Denmark. While possible, last word was that the transfer was still in preparation, though evidently the first batch of pilots have already finished training in the UK. And there’s no shortage of weapon systems that might have shot down Russian aircraft.
It appears the model Denmark, Norway and Netherlands all have is F-16AM/BM Block 15 MLU, which means they’re pretty old F-16s (bad), but were all upgraded (good), but the upgrades arrived in 1996 (not exactly bad, but not great either).
I would expect them to beat the snot out of anything manufactured in the Soviet Union, hold their own against the Su-30 (and possibly the Su-34, of which the Russians have lost a considerable number), maybe get edged by the Su-35 (though maybe not; that platform has had a lot of teething problems), and should theoretically be outclassed by the Su-57, which on paper is a thoroughly modern fighter aircraft with stealth capability (assuming the Russians will even let it go up against a near peer aircraft; they’ve seemed to use it very sparingly after the early stages of the war). And given the NATO country origins, expect all to be better maintained than their Russian counterparts.
This quick and dirty comparison analysis, of course, assumes that said planes will be engaged in dogfighting, which we’ve seen precious little of since the opening days of the war. Indeed, the aerial environment has become so deadly in Ukraine that neither side ventures much in airspace controlled by the other, and the favored Russian ground support tactic seems to be to fly up just short of the front live, release dumb munitions in an arc calculated to have it come down someone in the general vicinity of the enemy forces, then hightail it home and call it a day.
Ukraine getting F-16s would make Russian air activity near the front line even less likely, with AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles and their 60 mile range offering a real threat to splash anything that gets near the contested territory.
While the lethality of the airspace over Russian-held territory will also discourage too much direct sorties against Russian forces (at least at first), the AGM-88 HARM missile would considerably speed up the destruction of Russian anti-aircraft systems.
Russia’s S-400 system (their answer to Patriot) is probably good enough to shoot down the pre-stealth F-16, but Ukraine has had some success in destroying those systems. A squadron of F-16s launched from Odessa is easily within strike range of Sevastopol, and either JDAMs or Harpoons would be enough to sink whatever is left of the Black Sea Fleet that Russia has foolishly left there. And Harpoon-armed F1-6s on regular patrol would probably be enough to deny use of the northwest Black Sea to all of Russia’s surface fleet.
With enough degradation of Russia’s air defense systems, Ukraine might be able to achieve local air superiority in regions like Kherson, which could prove very valuable in future offensives.
A final advantage: With over 4,000 F-16s built, spare parts should be readily available to keep them flying.
Some 50-100 F-16s in Ukraine’s arsenal probably wouldn’t be the game changer that, say, HIMARS and ATACMS have proven, but they might be enough to shift the balance of power top further erode Russia’s hold over illegally seized Ukrainian territory.
Tags: aircraft, Black Sea, Denmark, F-16, Military, NATO, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine
Dream on. F-16’s are going to make no more difference than all the rest of the NATO weapon have. Russia will lose a few more planes and pilots it can replace, and Ukraine will have no airforce. Russia will dictate terms of Ukraine capitulation.
The F-16 with its low slung engine air intake is a ‘clean runway’ aircraft. Any debris on the runway gets sucked into its engine, causing severe damage and crashes. The Russian 3M14 Kalibr (NATO: SS-N-30A) land attack cruise missile (LACM) has one warhead option specifically designed to foul NATO runways.
Combat Aviation Advisory (CAA) ops are really tricky, it takes a lot of time and effort to get a Partner Nation up to speed on basic aircraft, much less modern fighters such as F-16s. It’s also about more than just airframes and spare parts. All sorts of elements, such as flight medicine, life support, mission planning, fuel and munitions, etc. have to be taken in to account and usually require specialized foreign advisors.
For instance, the US was able to effectively train the Colombian Army and Air Force to operate UH-60, UH-1 and Mi-17 helos in the 90s and early 2000s without continuous American support (the ultimate goal). And that took a decade of dedicated effort from units like the 6th SOS (my old squadron). If the Ukrainians are serious (and all the money and parts don’t get squandered and/or “mis-allocated”), then giving them F-16s could pay off in 4 or 5 years at the minimum. But good luck briefing that to the USAFE commander and the Joints Chiefs of Staff…..
Meanwhile Russian Navy’s amphibious troop ship finally found the bottom of the sea after AUF failed to take her out last month. They move the ship further away from the front, but somehow they still managed to sunk it.
Eventually the Ukrainians will have to fold. Propaganda like this not withstanding.
And our evil neo-con Western power governments will lose bigly for starting and perpetuating this war. As they deserve.
And when the Ukes finally come to their senses and chase the grifters out of their own government, they will hate us for throwing them into the meatgrinder so heartlessly.
In spite of all the naysayers, the addition of a modern near-peer air combat platform like the F-16 to the mix will make a large difference in the way the RuAF operates. The issue the UAF has had to live with is that their box-stock Soviet fighters have had to close at low altitude to well within the look-down detection range of the more modern RuAF fighters operating at high altitude back within their own SAM envelopes to even detect the Russian planes, and then the kinetics of shooting 1990s Soviet AAMs up from down low to 30kft+ at the Russian jets force them have to get even closer to get a shot, where the Russians with more modern radars and missiles can more easily pick them off.
If the MiG-29s and Su-27s could have been refitted with modern western radars and fire AMRAAM or the Brit Meteor, they could have threatened the Russian jets, but firing the 40+ year old Soviet crap, and using 40+ year old Soviet radars, there was no chance. Add to that the spares issue on the old Soviet jets and they had to back off and yield that part of the airspace.
The upgraded F-16 radar, and AMRAAM, change that equation, and that matters.
Will it make an instantaneous difference and allow the Ukrainians to immediately adopt the US Air-Land-Battle doctrine? Nope.
But like the other western weapons that have each changed the equation, like western MLRS and stealth cruise missiles and air launched decoys and HARM and Patriot and the other western SAMs and the Bradley, it will scramble the various TTPs that the Russians have evolved, opening a window of vulnerability. Whether the Ukrainians can exploit that is another question, but the F-16 will shake things up.
Anyone looking at the exchange rates between Ukraine and Russia and still saying that Russia’s victory is “inevitable” is delusional.
They have gone on fighting and expended way more of their forces than any rational actor would have. The number of Russian dead in this conflict exceeds everything they lost in Afghanistan exponentially, and for less real result. You saw the Soviet Union collapse in no small part because of the losses and social problems that were exposed by the fighting in Afghanistan, and you think that the fighting in Ukraine is somehow going to get them a victory?
A sanely-run Russian Federation would have recognized reality back in 2022, and put an end to this BS. They haven’t, and it is only going to get worse for them.
You can observe the essential insanity of what they’re doing around Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Neither locale has any real operational or strategic value, other than that they represent a few more square meters of Ukraine they can bury their troops under. Yet, how many Russian mobiks have they expended to get them? For what purpose?
This is about like watching the Iran-Iraq war, where the sheer ineptitude of one of the combatants is mind-boggling. Where are all the vaunted sophisticated Soviet-esque “deep operations” that we’re to suppose they’re also going to use conquering NATO? Where the hell are they with their “sophisticated” military technology and techniques?
This is playing out exactly as I suspected it would, once the revolution in cheap drones got used in combat. I never would have suspected the Ukrainians would be the ones doing it, though… Personally, I sort of figured it’d be someone like Singapore or Taiwan, taking down their much bigger neighbor, but here we are.
Russia is destroying itself demographically as we speak; none of those mobik casualties are going to form families and there are going to be a hell of a lot of excess women running around Russia in the next few decades.
Putin could well have been Russia’s savior. Instead, he chose to be the final nail in Russia’s demographic coffin. They are not coming back from this, and will likely be a Chinese satrapy by 2100.
“You can observe the essential insanity of what they’re doing around Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Neither locale has any real operational or strategic value, other than that they represent a few more square meters of Ukraine they can bury their troops under. Yet, how many Russian mobiks have they expended to get them? For what purpose?”
Don’t believe the CIA/MoD propaganda numbers.
The Russians wrote the book on assaulting heavily fortified positions at great expense to the fortified enemy and very limited expense to their own assault detachments:
Прорыв укреплённых линий обороны – П. С. СМИРНОВ – 1941
Proryv ukreplonnykh liniy oborony – P. S. SMIRNOV
Breakthrough of fortified defense lines – P. S. SMIRNOV
General V.F. Zaluzhnyi has admitted that he abandoned NATO tactics in September after blanching at the relative losses of the AFU and the Russian Forces. He has become an unqualified devotee of Smirnov. This has provoked considerable conflict among General Zaluzhnyi, President Zelenskiy, and their NATO advisors, but Zaluzhnyi has prevailed and the shattering AFU losses of June, July, and August have been dramatically reduced.
As usual, your incoherence is palpable.
You claim the Russians are “experts” at assaulting heavily defended positions, but they’re leaving enough bodies behind that you can see them in satellite photos, along with their wrecked vehicles. The Ukrainians are stacking them up like cordwood.
So… Expert? At what? Getting their people killed to no purpose? As well, what the hell are the strategic points to either Bakhmut or Avdiivka? Are they key terrain, or just spots on a map that the Russian propagandists can point at?
Not to mention, you’re quoting a theoretical work from 1941 as evidence, one that was superseded in practice several times over before the end of WWII. A war, again, that killed many times more Soviet conscripts than it did anyone else, mostly because of the ineptitude of their leadership. There are reasons that the exchange rates were what they were between the Soviets and the Germans, and most of those have to do with Soviet tactics and operational art. They didn’t care about casualties; the evidence for that is still visible in the territories of the old Soviet Union, demographically and economically. They still haven’t recovered from those profligate expenditures of human life, and are highly unlikely to suddenly overcome that “minor” problem.
Then, we have the assertion you make about Zaluzhnyi. How, pray tell, does that support what you’re saying about “Russian expertise at assault”?
You also fail to address the idea that such assaults have zero real value, whatsoever. What do they gain, in any strategic sense? Aside from killing off an entire generation of young Russians, that is… Who are already in short supply.
You’ve got an investment in Putin’s “brilliance”. I get that… You saw that manly chest exposed, and fell head over heels in love with his manful presentation, just like all the other Russia symps did. Small problem, however, is that you’re in love with a looter and an utter idiot whose historical legacy ain’t going to be putting the gang back together and dominating Central Europe, but being remembered as one of the final nails in the coffin for the Russian Federation. Every thing that man has done has turned to shit, with the exception of building his palaces and yachts, which were all subcontracted to outsiders who laughed all the way to the bank as the money meant for improving Russia went into their pockets.
That’s the guy you’re cheering for, BTW.
Get back to me when he starts doing things that might do them some good, like getting rid of Shoigu and that other uniformed cretin, Gerasimov. Until then, all that’s going to happen is that more and more of Russia’s youth are going to die or be crippled in the miasma of Ukraine.
I’d laugh my ass off, but you’ve obviously taken all this very seriously. You really think that somehow, some way, Russia is going to pull out of this crap intact. They’re not; the impact of Afghanistan, with exponentially fewer dead and wounded, helped destroy the Soviet Union. What do you suppose the result is going to be for this crapfest of a poorly-fought war, once the price comes home for the general public?
It took ten years of “zinky boys” coming home in boxes before the reality penetrated the thick Russian skulls and they pulled out of Afghanistan. As then, it’s going to eventually penetrate through to them that they’re being played by their leadership, and then we’ll see.
I will admit freely that I did not suspect the sheer depth of delusion available to Russia’s current leadership. Sane people would have looked at the casualty count and said “Yeah, we’re done here…”, throwing them out of office. Instead, the Russian Federation’s people have doubled-down on the stupid, and we’re going to see what we will see.
By the way… If the Russians were the “masters of the assault” you think they are, could you please explain why so many of them are dying, and why they’ve failed to win after so long at this? I mean, if they’re such “masters”, shouldn’t they have managed to take Kyiv back in 2022…?
Or, alternatively, they’re the bunch of murdering incompetents who’ve done more damage to their own nation than they have their supposed enemy?
@Kirk
We just passed a historical anniversary. Dec 26, 1991 … the Soviet Union dissolved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
Will history repeat itself soon? If so … where are all of Russia’s nukes going to go?
“By the way… If the Russians were the “masters of the assault” you think they are, could you please explain why so many of them are dying, and why they’ve failed to win after so long at this? I mean, if they’re such “masters”, shouldn’t they have managed to take Kyiv back in 2022…?
Or, alternatively, they’re the bunch of murdering incompetents who’ve done more damage to their own nation than they have their supposed enemy?”
The AFU is now suffering an existential manpower crisis, not the RF. The Ukrainians were at rough parity with the Russians in June, but now have to engage in abusive recruiting practices to replace the catastrophic losses they incurred during 2023Q3. Russian Forces’ losses during the same period seem modest, by comparison.
This is exactly the reason that the Russians have elected to assault Ukrainian defensive lines. The AFU is no longer wastefully expending manpower assaulting Russian fortifications using NATO tactics, so the Russians are making the Ukrainians sacrifice manpower on the defense. The Russians are using their overwhelming superiority in artillery to destroy the manpower of the AFU.
Russian authorities have stated repeatedly that their path to strategic victory is destroying the AFU’s manpower base. This is necessarily a slower process than conquering geography, but the Bloodlands are so vast that conquering geography is almost meaningless from a strategic standpoint. The Russians appear to be succeeding in their strategy, based on the many adverse recruiting/manpower stories now coming out of Ukraine.
I think that the Ukrainians are sending pregnant women into forward infantry combat positions says everything you need to know.
OSINT is an interesting thing, if you pay attention to it:
https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1740058534790779081/photo/1
The implications here, plus all the front-line reports coming in from (emphasis, here:) Russian sources complaining about lack of fire support and accuracy? Yeah. There’s only so much slack in the rope before the hangman’s noose snaps your neck, and I think we’re getting pretty damn close to that point for Russia.
As to the “pregnant women sent into forward infantry combat positions”? I think I want a cite on that, because the only case I know of that even begins to fit that set of characteristics is a volunteer medic who refused to stop doing her MEDEVAC job while she could still do it.
If you know of some case where the Ukrainians are forcing pregnant women into combat positions, I’d love to hear it. I haven’t seen anything like that, outside of Russian propaganda channels.
Your HerrDr8 is a barefaced liar.
The current NATO shell production rate – by all NATO countries, including the USA – is somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 155mm shells (on an annual rate basis). About 30,000 a month. Some time next year, it will supposedly increase to a 680,000 annual rate. About 56,000 per month. I suspect this is an aspirational number, rather than a reasonable expectation.
Were Ukraine to actually fire 6,000 shells a day on a regular basis, that would be 180,000 shells per month. 2.16 million shells per year. If the Ukrainians were to receive every shell NATO presently manufactures, they would be firing less than 1,000 shells per day or the 30,000 shells now being produced by NATO per month. But we know that there are other demands on NATO shell production, specifically Israel. There are no vast reserves of 155mm shells remaining to be tapped. And we know from independent reports that Ukrainian 155mm tubes are being supplied only one to three shells each, daily.
HerrDr8’s numbers are only believable if you are completely innumerate.
When you believe Ukraine propaganda and not Russian propaganda. Russian Derangement Syndrome. Or vice versa.
Denial is a powerful drug.
I can see his work. Where is yours?
Put up, or shut up. You’ve got nothing besides that raging little stiffy in your pants for Putin to back your claims.
So, if you’ve got some source, some citations? Give them to us. I mean, that’s how grown-ups do things, right?
“Put up, or shut up. You’ve got nothing besides that raging little stiffy in your pants for Putin to back your claims.”
This Defense One post released at the end of November details the various NATO 155mm shell production numbers released by diverse authorities for public consumption:
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artillery-shells-us-eu-see-different-results/392288/
What is not readily apparent in these U.S. and NATO numbers is the inclusion of rehabbed shells in the production numbers, as well as returns from South Korea and Japan.
The critical path in U.S. shell production is the 3,000 ton hydraulic press in the SCAAP. It has a capacity of 24,000 forgings on a 24/7 basis. This can be goosed a bit by deferring maintenance (e.g. October 2023), but then the piper must be paid. The European NATO members’ numbers are murkier. They seem to be talking capacity, rather than actual output.
None of these numbers – even the rosy projections – come close to the 2.16 million fantasy of HerrDr8.
“The Russians are using their overwhelming superiority in artillery to destroy the manpower of the AFU.”
You seem to to hold the Russian Army in high regard. Seemingly their advantage in manpower and artillery has led you to believe they are a modern day reincarnation of WW II’s Wermacht.
Yet during the Second Chechen War, Russia had significant advantages in artillery and manpower. They were unable to exploit them. Then, as now, they were reduced to a lengthy seige against well entrenched defenders.
The Chechens lacked Javeline missiles, F-16 fighter jets, HIMARS, Storm Shadow cruise missiles, Patriot air defense systems and the vast array of FPV drones employed by The AF.U.
The Ukrainians are better funded, better equipped, better trained and led than the Chechens. In addition, Ukraine has significant strategic depth and can be readily resupplied by Poland if it ever becomes necessary to employ a strategic retreat.
Russians will need a 3x manpower advantage to gain sufficient offensive capabilities if they hope for a breakthrough. I believe they are incapable of fielding and furnishing a 1,500,000 man army. Even if they could, the army that struggled against the Chechens will be balked by the much more capable Ukrainians.
The Russian military is a work in progress and you need to look at their trajectory, rather than any single past conflict. Right now, the RF and the AFU are in an elite class of military organizations who have deep experience in large scale conventional operations. No other military organizations can claim such recent experience. Maybe the Israelis can in a few months.
The Russo-Chechen wars were analogous to our war in Vietnam, because the Chechens had a safe harbor in Georgia, just as the ‘insurgents’ in Vietnam had safe harbors in Cambodia and Laos. This makes it difficult, maybe impossible, to destroy enemy forces. The Russians attacked Georgia in 2009 in revenge for the safe harbor offered the Chechens, and the RF performance against Georgia was notable better than their performances in Chechnya. Georgia had no safe harbor. Still not a good Russian performance, but much better than those in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
The 20 year Afghanistan war we just lost would be another reasonable comparison, as would the second Iraq war. In both cases, our military was confronted by opponents with safe harbors. But these were all ‘small wars’ whose strategy and tactics differ from the major conflict occurring in the Bloodlands today. But your logic would find the American military to be inadequate.
The AFU has been heavily advised by U.S. and U.K. officers during the current war, especially during the AFU 2023Q3 offensive. The AFU have also received lavish supplies of the most sophisticated munitions the NATO militaries field. They have safe harbors in Romania and Poland to shield their supplies until needed and heal their wounded. Yet the Russians have frustrated the latest AFU offensive at a minimal cost to themselves and a terrifying cost to the AFU.
The Russian military forces are adapting and improving, essentially executing a PDSA program. Their OPK is producing vast volumes of ordnance which we and our NATO allies cannot match. Their soldiers are holding ground tenaciously and not surrendering. Russian soldiers are advancing on orders, into maelstroms, without mutinying. They are not experiencing massive antiwar protests on the home front.
It is doubtful that Ukraine can dislodge the Russians. Their cost to break through Russian lines is no less than the Russian cost to break Ukrainian lines. Ukraine is a much smaller country and can ill afford its continuing losses holding its current front lines, much less the losses it would incur trying to dislodge the Russians.
So the Ukrainians need to think about the Finnish dilemma in 1940.
“The Russo-Chechen wars were analogous to our war in Vietnam, because the Chechens had a safe harbor in Georgia.”
…much as the Ukrainians have a safe harbor in Poland. If you want to see Russia’s “trajectory” just wait until you see Poland’s upgraded military take the field when Russia tries Georgia, Act II.
“[Your] logic would find the American military to be inadequate.” This is a poor analogy. The Soviet’s goal in Afghanistan was to expand its satellite states
“Russian soldiers are advancing on orders, into maelstroms, without mutinying.”
They have begun assaulting their officers. It is difficult to manage missions when you are afraid that a briefing held before a large group of soldiers will degenerate into a mob scene. As a result, attacking formations are typically small and easily routed.
“They are not experiencing massive antiwar protests on the home front.”
“So the Ukrainians need to think about the Finnish dilemma in 1940.”
The Russians will not withdraw if Ukraine cedes territory; Ukraine will be gradually absorbed and Ukrainians will be exiled. Russia took a terrible beating in the Winter War and paid dearly for their small territorial gains, just as they are paying now.
The FSB is doing a fine job of suppressing internal dissent!
When FJB cuts a deal with the house Republicans for his $100+ Billion aid package, I suspect that some fierce gnashing of teeth will occur amongst certain members of the Commentariat. It will be glorious.
[…] Background: What F-16s Would Mean for Ukraine. […]
Ukraine cannot win this war without outside military help. I’m not talking supplies, but manpower.
Any Russian victory will be purely pyrrhic.
Both of these countries are doomed by their horrid demographics. And this war is merely accelerating that. If either Ukraine or Russia is still around in ten years in anything but name I would be extremely surprised. If I were a cynical man I would think someone is playing these two countries off one another so they can have either themselves or their friends move in afterwards.
The F-16s will alter the battlefield in favor of Ukraine. Russia, should but may not, adjust to neutralize that performance advantage. I have little faith that Ukraine can effectively deploy its new toys beyond achieving a stalemate. As well, I have little faith in Russia doing anything more than waste arms and lives in it needs to survive this conflict.
Putin is the primary driver here, make no damn mistake.
He’s got this mental image going as being the savior of this imaginary construct he’s got going, Russky Mir, which he sees as having been torn apart by inimical outside forces. He has to be the guy who saves all that, and I suspect a lot of it has to do with all the sheerly evil crap he did to get to where hi is in order to achieve that. Remember how he came to power? The blown-up apartment buildings in Moscow? The hundreds of dead Russians he parlayed into his position?
How many have died since then, as he’s consolidated power?
I think the reality of things is that he’s so deeply into Ukraine at this point, mentally and spiritually, that he can’t tolerate the idea that Ukrainians don’t want to be a part of this fantasy Russky Mir mirage he has built. That’s why he’s doing all this incredibly stupid military crap, having utterly destroyed what little military power he actually had. The terror bombings are a key tell; he’s going after the civilians, not real military targets. All those missiles targeted on apartment buildings and retail centers? Why the fuck are they sent there, instead of legitimate military targets like training areas, concentration points, and munitions storage? This whole war has been an exercise in childish pique, expressed by an elderly mental midget that cannot accept that Ukraine isn’t a part of his fantasy. He’s persisting with this because if he doesn’t, then he has to admit he’s a failure.
Inevitably, Russia is going to fail at this, and fail hard. When the breakpoint comes, it’s going to look a lot like the Brusilov Offensive. It ain’t going to look like the Battle of Berlin.
Right now, the biggest problem we need to be worried about is what the hell happens once the Russians collapse into chaos. They’re not going to do anything else; look at the stalemate that has prevailed against an opponent a quarter their size. The Ukrainians are in a hard, hard place, but the pressure they’re under is creating something out of them, forging a national identity that’s going to be hard as hell to kill. What’s Russia getting out of this? Spend some time watching all the material available on Reddit and Youtube, then tell me which side is getting socially stronger. The fact that the Russians are treating their low-level soldiers the way they are? Good God… The sheer horror of it. And, when they get home, wounded and damaged? How long do you think Putin and his coterie of idiots can keep this up?
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, they were, the leadership felt, a true superpower. A nation that could do as it willed; they had no sense of limit. By 1989, they’d found that they actually did have limits, and those weren’t all that high.
In that nine-odd years of war, they deployed 620,000 men, suffered 14,453 casualties that they were willing to acknowledge, and the end result was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like it or not, those fourteen thousand dead resulted in the fall of the Communists simply due to the exposure of the inherent contradictions of the entire state. The people could not tolerate the loss of life.
And, compared to Ukraine? Afghanistan was a very well-run little war.
Still essentially served as the killing blow to the Soviet Union and the Communist Party in Russia.
Now, for those of you who are still deluded enough to think that mighty Russia STRONK!!! is going to come out of this fiasco-on-steroids in Ukraine with much of anything? Let’s consider the numerical comparisons, here:
Ukraine: Roughly 60,000 dead and ten times that in wounded. In under 2 years. Terrain controlled? Less than they had at their high point. Vehicle and economic losses? Oh, dear God… The numbers of Soviet tanks that Putin has burned through would have earned him a bullet through the ear during the Stalin era. Let’s not even get into the whole “destruction of social fabric” situation, either; regional governors are building their own little mini-militias, while Putin burns through both his seed-corn troops and his regime-support troops as if they’re water thrown into the desert.
Best estimates, all that, based on really lousy data.
But, those are actually rather conservative numbers. There is no telling how many families in Russia who’re missing members and who have no idea where they are or what happened to them after call-up; they’ve just vanished.
The Soviet Union, with a much stronger basis behind it, evaporated after the effects of Afghanistan became clear enough. Along with other factors, but that foolish war was a major contributor to the “loss of willing suspension of disbelief” that killed that entire proposition. Took ’em ten years to kill only a fraction of what the Putin faction has done in under two…
And, you all think that this mighty “Russia Stronk” thing is gonna survive this? End of the day, no matter what happens in Ukraine, this is quite literally killing the Russian Federation as a nation and the political system with it. Entirely self-inflicted wounds, caused by putting their trust in a delusional strong-man who is play-acting as Peter the Great.
Both Ukraine and Russia are losing.
The Soviet’s Afghanistan venture was only a minor factor in the collapse of the USSR.
The single most important factor in the demise of the USSR was the collapse in the price of oil from around $ 120 per barrel in 1980 to $ 24 per barrel in 1986. This wrecked the Soviet economy. The price of oil increased from 1986 on, but by then inflation and critical shortages of every imported input doomed the the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) system and created paralyzing shortages across the entire Warsaw Pact.
The second most important factor was the ossified, incompetent Ukrainian leadership of the USSR. Khruschev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, and Gorbachev were unable to formulate any competent responses to the externalities afflicting the USSR. The only Russian General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after Lenin – Yuri Andropov – was too sick during his term to dominate party cadres or formulate competent policy.
The foremost military factor was Reagan’s Star Wars and rearmament programs. The USSR diverted too many of its paltry economic resources to military competition. Cruise missile defenses alone required Soviet expenditures that exceeded the entire USSR military budget in 1975.
Finally, the entirely Ukrainian clown show at the Chernobyl NPP broke any and all of the remaining spirit of the avowed ‘socialists’ within every Warsaw Pact country.
Ah, the conventional wisdom of the fool.
Do you think that Ukraine was somehow autonomous back in the days of Chernobyl? That they ran the plant?
The three primary figures involved in the “error” resulting in the disaster were respectively, two ethnic Russians from Siberia, and an ethnic Ukrainian. The Ukrainian was the junior man on the team, and only had two months on the job. The two senior men were the ones running the show, both Russian.
Your insouciant characterization of the problems at Chernobyl as being somehow a “Ukrainian clownshow” are on brand for a Putin sycophant. They’re also why the Ukrainians want the hell out from under Mother Russia. It’s just like the claims that the Holodomor didn’t happen or was caused by stupid Ukrainians who couldn’t grow food for themselves…
You are a piece of work. Are the checks from the FSB still clearing, I wonder…?
Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov of the the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy designed – and holds the patents – on the RBMK reactor. He was probably the only person in the Soviet Union who knew and fully understood the ramifications of the RBMK design’s large positive void coefficient of reactivity and its responsibility for previous near catastrophes at the Leningrad NPP in 1975 and the Chernobyl NPP in 1982. The Soviet security organs deep classified these incidents, preventing Soviet NPP personnel from knowing this crucial flaw in the RBMK reactor design.
Nikolai Maximovich Fomin was the Chief Engineer of the Chernobyl NPP. Together with Alexandrov, he devised and scripted the turbine shutdown momentum test which caused the disaster. He had been Chernobyl’s Chief engineer since the inception of its construction in 1972, so he would have, at the very least, been aware of the Chernobyl Reactor 1 near disaster in September 1982. This was a partial core meltdown on startup caused by insufficient cooling water to control neutron flux.
Both were Ukrainians. Not Russians.
None of the other personnel at Chernobyl had the knowledge or education to understand the danger created by the turbine shutdown momentum test. They performed the test according to the script. They were not warned of the possible hazards of the scripted test.
The two parties with the most proximate responsibility for the disaster were both Russian.
Anatoly Dyatlov was born in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. At the time of the accident, he was the deputy chief engineer for the plant, and he was the guy who supervised the “safety” test. He also served time in prison for his culpability.
Aleksandr Akimov was the second Russian at the top of the pyramid, born in Novosibirsk, Russian SFSR. At the time of the accident, he was the shift supervisor. He was also the one who compounded the issue by making false reports after the initial incident, and along with the sole Ukrainian in a leadership position that night, died while making valiant attempts to “do something” about the accident.
Leonid Toptunov was that Ukrainian. He had less than two months experience as a plant operator, and the accident was his first shutdown. He worked with Akimov to try and control the situation, exposing himself to enough radiation to kill him. Like Akimov, the only reason he wasn’t prosecuted was because he was dead of acute radiation poisoning.
I’d love to know why you have this hard-on for Ukraine and Ukrainians, that you have to resort to lies and historical revision to cast blame on them for something done on their territory by the authorities of the Soviet Union. I’d suspect that you have “issues”, or are just that obtuse. Either way, you’re delusional and wrong on this issue. The historical facts are what they are, and trying to shift blame for a Soviet fuck-up onto a post-Soviet entity because you feel like they “deserve” it? Who’re you holding responsible for Sayano-Shushenskaya, where your oh-so-competent Russians managed to blow up a hydroelectric plant’s entire machinery hall through sheer spectacular stupidity? That the Ukrainians, too?
Kirk –
You surprise me with your absolute faith in the Soviet (in)justice system. I had been suffering from a misapprehension that you were a committed anticommunist.
Academician A. P. Alexandrov was a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a thrice honored Hero of Socialist Labor. He was at the very pinnacle of the Soviet nuclear power nomenklatura. There was no way he was going to be prosecuted by the Soviet justice system for the Chernobyl disaster. He was protected by his fellow academicians and Ukrainians, however, he did get keel hauled by the Politburo in at least two different emergency meetings immediately after the disaster and then was put out to farm.
Party General Secretary M. S. Gorbachev (another Ukrainian) was incensed at Alexandrov’s prevarications and wanted to put Alexandrov on trial. But Gorbachev had not consolidated his power during his one year tenure in office and had to settle for putting Alexandrov out to farm. He desperately needed the cooperation of the academicians to put out the nuclear fire raging in RBMK Reactor 4, particularly V. A. Legasov, the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. Legasov is the real hero of the Chernobyl disaster, but he did protect Alexandrov from any legal consequences for his actions and inactions.
Dyatlov, Akimov, and Toptunov flawlessly executed the test script given to them by Chief Engineer Fomin, up to the point where the thermal power of the RBMK reactor surged by several orders of magnitute. Chief Engineer Fomin was their superior, issued them the test script, and briefed them (however inadequately) on the test particulars. Dyatlov was a martinet and tolerated no deviations from script during the turbine shutdown momentum test, until it went haywire. There is no indication that any Chernobyl NPP employee violated the test script up to that point.
Dyatlov, Akimov, and Toptunov were completely unaware of the 1975 Leningrad NPP disaster or the very adverse safety rationale underlying the turbine shutdown momentum test. None of the three really understood the potentialities of the test. After an almost complete, immediate loss of reactor thermal power they were stunned by the RBMK reactor’s massive, resurgence in thermal output – within a period of less than 45 seconds!
Either Akimov or Toptunov – or both – SCRAMed the reactor towards the end of that 45 second window. This was not in the test script, but it was not precluded by the test script. Regardless, it was the one smart move that morning. It was too late to save the reactor, but it did prevent an even greater disaster.
You owe Akimov and Toptunov a sincere apology. They saved millions of lives.
Six individuals were convicted by a Ukrainian Soviet kangaroo court. The design flaws of the RBMK reactor were not considered by the court. Ultimately, the Soviet Ministry of Atomic Energy and the IAEA determined that the RBMK reactor design and how the operators were informed of safety protocols were responsible for the disaster. This was a delicate way of implicating Alexandrov.
Only Chief Engineer Fomin, among the defendants, deserved to be convicted. He was the only defendant in the Chernobyl prosecution with mens rea. He suffered a complete mental breakdown and was paralyzed with guilt.