Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[jonlbs]

If you cant get the planes go for the pilots next. Passive intelligence could probably find the name and address of nearly every pilot in the US Military. Can't imagine what active intelligence could do. Send a kill squad (cartel? spies? poison? gangs? every scumbag has a price?) and no planes are taking off.

If I'm thinking it, they probably are too? It's way easier to fight dirty.

[icohftb]

1 hour ago, jonlbs said:

If you cant get the planes go for the pilots next. Passive intelligence could probably find the name and address of nearly every pilot in the US Military. Can't imagine what active intelligence could do. Send a kill squad (cartel? spies? poison? gangs? every scumbag has a price?) and no planes are taking off.

If I'm thinking it, they probably are too? It's way easier to fight dirty.

Not enough drones to target all of pilot social media influencers 

[Pooter]

16 hours ago, pbar said:

I hope the US Air Force is paying attention to this and has countermeasures in place.  If the PRC attacks Taiwan and doesn't do the same thing here in CONUS, they would be fools.  Doubtless there are already PRC agents in place given our lax border security and student visa program. 

Don’t worry Ellsworth is building sunshades for the B-21s, we’re g2g

[HeyEng]

16 hours ago, jonlbs said:

If you cant get the planes go for the pilots next. Passive intelligence could probably find the name and address of nearly every pilot in the US Military. Can't imagine what active intelligence could do. Send a kill squad (cartel? spies? poison? gangs? every scumbag has a price?) and no planes are taking off.

If I'm thinking it, they probably are too? It's way easier to fight dirty.

During the height of the Cold War the Soviet war plan with Sweden was to send in Speznaz teams to kill Swedish fighter pilots!

[M2]

 

[Prosuper]

If I was an enemy commander I would try the same thing, except I would target every Tanker we have in Conus and make our bombers and fighters dependent landing for refuel.

[disgruntledemployee]

Modern day sappers.

Demonstrated, and now every base with aircraft on the ramp is a huge risk.  Anti-drone tech/systems is where our R&D/Acquisition resources need to be focused and fast.  And hard shelters, but those take a lot of space and if you leave the door open, it can still go boom.  

Z made a statement, and maybe the scale was set to what occurred, but what if his army was able to hit more bases, more planes, more radars/AA/Comms/Arty/drone stations/etc?

[raimius]

Considering that these types of drones have relatively small payloads, we don't need to build shelters hardened against 500lb bombs.  An enclosure that guarantees relatively low levels of protection and standoff would probably render FPV attacks mostly ineffective...and might actually be affordable.

[McJay Pilot]

12 minutes ago, raimius said:

…and might actually be affordable.

Affordable? Our MIC is not interested in affordable! 

[JimNtexas]

On 6/3/2025 at 11:27 AM, disgruntledemployee said:

Modern day sappers.

Demonstrated, and now every base with aircraft on the ramp is a huge risk.  Anti-drone tech/systems is where our R&D/Acquisition resources need to be focused and fast.  And hard shelters, but those take a lot of space and if you leave the door open, it can still go boom.  

Z made a statement, and maybe the scale was set to what occurred, but what if his army was able to hit more bases, more planes, more radars/AA/Comms/Arty/drone stations/etc?

I don’t think we need very many tabV harden shelters like we have in Europe here in the United States. But pretty much every valuable airplane to include tankers and high dollar transport should be in enclosed building. Drones  can fly into open doors or into hail, sheds or sun sheds.  
 

This is such an obvious precaution to take. I doubt anything like that will ever happen instead will be laser and microwave energy, directed weapons that built by one of the big contractors for a few million per unit and we can only afford one per base that’s the most likely outcome of what we can learn from this Ukrainian Pearl Harbor

Edited Wednesday at 05:19 PM by JimNtexas

[Biff_T]

We should take used compact car tires and cover all of our heavies with them.  

[fire4effect]

On 6/2/2025 at 4:50 PM, Prosuper said:

If I was an enemy commander I would try the same thing, except I would target every Tanker we have in Conus and make our bombers and fighters dependent landing for refuel.

Non stealthy Tanker Fleet. The Achilles Heel of a moder Air Force. In WW2 the lightning advance to Germany from Normandy stalled due largely the inability to keep the vehicles gassed up. Same reason the German Counter Offensive died in the Ardennes. No fuel to keep the Panzers moving. Even in Ukraine the original invasion stalled because of lack of fuel and the Javelin. If something is carrying a lot of fuel, it's inherently ready to turn into a fireball.

[Majestik Møøse]

On 6/4/2025 at 10:18 AM, JimNtexas said:

What we can learn from this Ukrainian Pearl Harbor

Since they were already at war it’s more like the Doolittle Raid; calling it Pearl Harbor makes it sound like Russia is some kind of victim.

[Clark Griswold]

On 6/5/2025 at 11:37 AM, fire4effect said:

Non stealthy Tanker Fleet. The Achilles Heel of a modern Air Force.

Concur but we have options if we are willing to / allowed to change force structure and fleet composition 

The -47 sounds like it will have the range needed to be less dependent on the tanker, if we think the priority fight is the Indo-Pacific then we prioritize systems for that theater and divest some of the older shorter range platforms to get more of what we need.  

Not immediately of course but soon.

Off hand, more B-21s, unfornicate the -46 and certify for unrestricted ops, get a long range UCAV (not a CCA).  The F-15EX probably mixes well into this too for its reported range (790 NM). That’s a relevant combat range with a tanking south of the PI to ingress to the Taiwan Strait.  

 

[disgruntledemployee]

What is to stop our enemies from getting into the US, buying some containers and rigs, and parking them a mile from a base?  Other than good explosives, not much.  Fleet composition doesn't stop this.

[SuperWSO]

1 hour ago, disgruntledemployee said:

What is to stop our enemies from getting into the US, buying some containers and rigs, and parking them a mile from a base?  Other than good explosives, not much.  Fleet composition doesn't stop this.

Come on, it’s not like we let our adversary buy large plots of land adjacent to our military facilities… wait… it appears new information has just been handed to me. Fuck.

[Clark Griswold]

What is to stop our enemies from getting into the US, buying some containers and rigs, and parking them a mile from a base?  Other than good explosives, not much.  Fleet composition doesn't stop this.

No doubt, I think we believe it can’t/won’t happen to us but a novel attack is certainly on the bingo card
Hard shelters, land setbacks, anti UAS systems, new Prohibited Areas around bases, jail time for violators, etc… nothing is 100% but you need to try to get there and overlapping defenses add up
Not every base immediately but start now, this nation needs to get into a different place in terms of security mindset, it would give the enemy some insight into our sources and methods but declassifying some intel to tell the why for this shift to the public, like the Why We Fight movies in WW2, call them Why We Prepare, might shift the zeitgeist


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[Lawman]

No doubt, I think we believe it can’t/won’t happen to us but a novel attack is certainly on the bingo card
Hard shelters, land setbacks, anti UAS systems, new Prohibited Areas around bases, jail time for violators, etc… nothing is 100% but you need to try to get there and overlapping defenses add up
Not every base immediately but start now, this nation needs to get into a different place in terms of security mindset, it would give the enemy some insight into our sources and methods but declassifying some intel to tell the why for this shift to the public, like the Why We Fight movies in WW2, call them Why We Prepare, might shift the zeitgeist


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I’m thinking of how easily chemical/biological/radiological materials could be dispersed effectively across a dense population area.

You could literally just get a coke can worth of something scary lethal on a drone that cost hundreds of dollars, and swarm it across a place like Wall Street at lunch time.


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[Clark Griswold]

I’m thinking of how easily chemical/biological/radiological materials could be dispersed effectively across a dense population area.

You could literally just get a coke can worth of something scary lethal on a drone that cost hundreds of dollars, and swarm it across a place like Wall Street at lunch time.


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Yup
With the capes that non state actors have demonstrated lately and the level of support rogue states have been willing to give VEOs recently, we’re all three of lucky/blessed/well protected by professionals to not have this happen
As with gun control, I’m for a certain amount, in relation to UAS, we probably need to expand the FARs and prohibit recreational flight in certain areas for that reason, require a UAS transponder always to tie back to an operator certificate, drone detection systems deployed, etc…


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[uhhello]

2 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

Yup
With the capes that non state actors have demonstrated lately and the level of support rogue states have been willing to give VEOs recently, we’re all three of lucky/blessed/well protected by professionals to not have this happen
As with gun control, I’m for a certain amount, in relation to UAS, we probably need to expand the FARs and prohibit recreational flight in certain areas for that reason, require a UAS transponder always to tie back to an operator certificate, drone detection systems deployed, etc…


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Like gun control, the restrictions you mention will only restrict lawful operators.

[Clark Griswold]

Like gun control, the restrictions you mention will only restrict lawful operators.

You’re right, it will impede some amount of freedom of the law abiding but overall the benefit IMO would be worth it


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[fire4effect]

21 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

Concur but we have options if we are willing to / allowed to change force structure and fleet composition 

The -47 sounds like it will have the range needed to be less dependent on the tanker, if we think the priority fight is the Indo-Pacific then we prioritize systems for that theater and divest some of the older shorter range platforms to get more of what we need.  

Not immediately of course but soon.

Off hand, more B-21s, unfornicate the -46 and certify for unrestricted ops, get a long range UCAV (not a CCA).  The F-15EX probably mixes well into this too for its reported range (790 NM). That’s a relevant combat range with a tanking south of the PI to ingress to the Taiwan Strait.  

 

Looks like this thread continues on a couple parallel tracks. Agree with above. One game changer was the INF treaty going away allowing things like the Typhon Mid-Range Capability (combination of Tomahawks and SM-6s) for the Army. PRC tried intimidating the local countries including the Philippines in the South China Sea and the Philippines was only too happy to have the Typhon set up in their country. Putting as many of those mobile systems in that area should give the PRC some sleepless nights. Whether that results one day in a "Cuban Missile Crisis" of the Indo-Pacific is a whole other discussion.

[Clark Griswold]

24 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

Looks like this thread continues on a couple parallel tracks. Agree with above. One game changer was the INF treaty going away allowing things like the Typhon Mid-Range Capability (combination of Tomahawks and SM-6s) for the Army. PRC tried intimidating the local countries including the Philippines in the South China Sea and the Philippines was only too happy to have the Typhon set up in their country. Putting as many of those mobile systems in that area should give the PRC some sleepless nights. Whether that results one day in a "Cuban Missile Crisis" of the Indo-Pacific is a whole other discussion.

Yup, I’ll close the loop on my opinions on UAS/guns saying some control but not over control.

Arming all the countries we can and pulling them into our orbit to give them multiple problems?

Yes

More IRBMs in theater to give them pause?

Yes