Russian invasion of Ukraine

[BlueAnorak]

I think you're thinking of Ramstein, which is near Kaiserslautern, I don't think there is any military based at Frankfurt's main airport, though they do use it, there is an US army airfield at Weisbaden.

Yeah I meant Ramstein. In my head, I always thought Ramstein was right next to Franfurt but it's as far away as Manchester is from London!

 

[domalino]

I wonder how much our GCHQ can actually hear and see ? They seem pretty confident just lately coming out with statements like today’s in the times ,that they will know about any nuclear weapon launch before it actually happens!
I’d love to know the extent of their listening capabilities!

I believe it's more to do with sattelite imagery than listening to audio.

Nuclear warheads need very particular storage, they're not all in missile silos waiting to go at the push of a button, 99% need hours or days to be ready to fire - that's why there's always talk about levels of alert or of preparedness to fire.

If Russia goes to DEFCON 1, the rest of the world will see them move missiles and warheads all over the place.

 

[BlueAnorak]

I wonder how much our GCHQ can actually hear and see ? They seem pretty confident just lately coming out with statements like today’s in the times ,that they will know about any nuclear weapon launch before it actually happens!
I’d love to know the extent of their listening capabilities!

As always, one thing 5 eyes does really well is monitoring radio traffic from listening stations all over the world. Even if it's encrypted you can work out where the transmission was made and do pattern graph analysis to show where radio traffic is coming from. (A lot of Russuan radio traffic isn't encypted BTW - really shit military communications in this day and age.) This is automatically cross referencied with Satalite imagery tells you where units are and where they are moving too.
All sorts of ancilary information is deduced from signal processing as well - that can actually tie transmissions down to individual transition equipment!
The manual version of this was actually the key to beating the Nazis in WW2 - breaking the Enigma code on top was just the icing on the cake.
What we have now is light years ahead of what we used to have in the 80s (and that was bloody good).

 

[bonespost]

strange, up out of Frankfurt clipping Belarus,altitude sugests its going to enter Russia, Moscow bound?

It was a Kazakhstan government/ civil IL 76

 

[MafeotulBlue]

Let's go in and de-Nazify them

Pretty sure about 20 countries would have if the nuclear issue wouldn’t have been there.

 

[CTID1977]

More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.

“Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service.

This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had been killed or critically wounded since the start of the war. In September, the British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the Russian army’s total losses exceeded 80,000; of those, about 25,000 were thought to have been killed.

 

[CTID1977]

more than 10 000 in a month. everything is going according to plan and they haven't started yet.

 

[metalblue]

As always, one thing 5 eyes does really well is monitoring radio traffic from listening stations all over the world. Even if it's encrypted you can work out where the transmission was made and do pattern graph analysis to show where radio traffic is coming from. (A lot of Russuan radio traffic isn't encypted BTW - really shit military communications in this day and age.) This is automatically cross referencied with Satalite imagery tells you where units are and where they are moving too.
All sorts of ancilary information is deduced from signal processing as well - that can actually tie transmissions down to individual transition equipment!
The manual version of this was actually the key to beating the Nazis in WW2 - breaking the Enigma code on top was just the icing on the cake.
What we have now is light years ahead of what we used to have in the 80s (and that was bloody good).

In one of the articles posted yesterday on TheAtlantic those in the know said about the west having hidden cameras near the storage sites (they have 7 IIRC) as well as local informants etc. With the more obvious satellites and communication interceptions there seems little chance the Russians can fart in the nuclear storage sites without us knowing.

 

[domalino]

More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.

“Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service.

This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had been killed or critically wounded since the start of the war. In September, the British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the Russian army’s total losses exceeded 80,000; of those, about 25,000 were thought to have been killed.

Think of walking out of Wembley after a big match and that huge crowd all the way down Wembley way, and every single person you see dead or disabled or missing.



And that's just Russia's side. What a waste.

 

[Tuearts right boot]

When this war is over, no matter who ' wins ' russians will never ever be able to hold their heads up on the world stage no matter what. They will be looked down upon in foriegn countries around the world, with the exception of a couple. Business will only be done in shady underhanded deals. Ukrainians on the other hand will be welcomed and walk proudly with their heads held high throughout the world, what a truely admirable nation of people.