This is not a good time to be a Ukrainian soldier on the frontlines facing off against the Russians. I want to show you two videos where you can see how two different Russian weapons are employed on the battlefield–the Zala Drones and the TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrower. For those who say this is just Russian propaganda, I would note in passing that Ukraine is not posting comparable videos showing it wreaking havoc on Russian positions. This is another case of the dog not barking–i.e., if there is a dog in the house you would hear it barking if you banged on the door. No bark, probably no dog.
The ZALA drones carry explosives. Think of them as a Kamikaze aircraft without a fanatic pilot on board ready to end his life for the glory of the cause. The guy or gal flying these drones is sitting in a comfortable chair in a safe location. He or she can see the panicked troops on the ground scrambling for cover.
Brian Berletic offers up some details:
These are drones produced by Zala – a subsidiary of Kalashinikov Concern – that fly over potential targets before swooping in to destroy them.
They do not fire munitions. They are the munition.
The Kub (pictured second) is smaller and intended for anti-personnel missions. The Lancet (similar appearance to a missile) is larger and used on vehicles and buildings.
This is video evidence that the Russian drones are destroying US M777 howitzers.
Then there is the TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrower. I can hear Jim Morrison of the Doors singing, “come on baby light my fire.” Here is a picture of the unit:
The Military Times provides a nice summary of its capability:
The TOS-1A is used to clear out buildings, field fortifications and bunkers. It is also effective against light armored vehicles. The heavy flamethrower system is generally similar to multiple launch rocket systems, however it fires different types of rockets and has a much shorter firing range. . . .
There are at least two types of warheads – incendiary and thermobaric. The thermobaric weapons are also called vacuum or fuel-air explosives. This type of munitions releases a large cloud of flammable gas and causes massive explosions. It is used to clear out buildings, bunkers and other fortifications. The TOS-1A heavy flamethrower system launches a single rocket, or a pair of two rockets within 0.5 s. Full salvo duration is 12 seconds when launching rockets manually an 6 seconds when launching all rockets in automatic mode.
The key point is that this is not a stand-off weapon system launched from far away. It is up front with the troops that are advancing on entrenched, defended positions. Judge for yourself:
These two videos help explain why Russia and the Donbas militias are moving forward steadily while Ukrainian troops are either dying or retreating. No other good options.
I close with Jim Morrison:
Other posts I have read today estimate Ukraine’s dead at 80,000 and 170,000 wounded with many never to return to combat. If anywhere close to accurate how can Ukraine last till winter even? Why would a government concerned for the lives of its young men not sue for peace?
Because they’re a kleptocracy not a government and they don’t care.
Heard on a podcast that Ukrainian parliamentarians recently voted themselves a 70% pay rise. ” please world, send us more money for our brave soldiers.” No doubt the soldiers are brave but that’s not where the money is going.
Light my Fire (2017 remaster). Remasters are of very dubious value .
The Ukrainians have no say at all, Antipropo, Z and the generals do as he and they are told or are ignored, the Azov officers impose the discipline often at a distance (there’s a recording on one of the Anatoli Sharij’s videos on u-tube where the distant low ranking officer (distant from the front line) says to a guy complaining about the lack of everything, men in particular ‘will send you another 10 when the current few men you have get slaughtered).
For the Americans the Ukrainian slaughter house’s ideal, facing a modern armed force not a bunch of cave dwellers, they can test everything, the new hardware, comms, intelligence gathering, the coupling of commercial satellite inputs with military gear, the lot without sacrificing any American lives, or perhaps a few, what’s not to like?
The spent money’s the monopoly kind, they can print the greenbacks by the ton, did for Afghanistan, over 80% of the dollars in circulation got printed in the last two years, the reckoning is coming, the dollar’s holding in the vaults of the world’s central banks will continue to sink, since 2010 it has dropped by 6%, you may like to watch Cyrus, the subject he covers isn’t Ukraine, it’s the dollar, but it’s relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n97Iqqqg6o
Dollar won’t end – we have enough vassals who accept nothing else. Plus we have assets like #1 stock market in the world, #1 real estate market in the world, etc that people want to invest in. Especially rich vassals who expropriated their countries wealth. Once the BRICS basket or whatever comes online it will compete with USD but not supplant it – too much inertia and power to keep at least half of the worlds GDP in our orbit. This situation is not desired by the West who dreams of “new world order” which is basically modern colonialism with USA/EU/Davos crowd as dictator of the world economy and politics but they’ll learn to live with it.
In some way this is sader for the proles world wide as austerity will be implemented to feed the military might of the competitors in this new cold war. Also, If you believe in Global Warming that social engineering project will take a back seat too as everything of value is a derivative of oil and consumption thereof.
Quite, Steve M.
The dollar will not collapse, it will mimic the sterling when that currency lost its lustre, what will happen is the world central banks will hold fewer and fewer dollars.
If you check the data, by the turn of the century the dollar reserves were over 70% of the central bank holdings, it’s well down now, as Cyrus points out.
You missed an important point: is “half of the world’s GDP” – and this is too optimistic an estimate – enough for the dollar to survive? The topic is too extensive to be clarified in the form of a comment, but the answer is: it’s not!
Umm no, they have found that they are mostly overpriced crap not fit for the battlefield against a modern military (and many are poor even against, say a third rate military like Iraq – Patriots had 5% success against SCUDs -see work of Postol! Look at the bloody maintenance requirements -a military suppliers dream, but not an effective weapon in the real world.
Bad for sales. Did you ever wonder why the US never used the THAAD to take out the N Korean missiles? Its not as if the engineers do not know the limitations – the systems were designed primarily for profitability, not real world effectiveness.
Simple – never ask a question to which you do not want to know the answer – its bad for sales.
I’m thinking ahead to the next military budget that must be passed “to prevent what Putin’s doing over there from coming over here”
I had not thought of that but you’re most likely right. Good to be a cynic. Thanks.
If your religion teaches you that those who are not of your religion are worthless untermenchen, then why would you worry about them dying? Just check out who makes up the Ukie government since 2014, and who put them there.
Make sense now?
Unfortunately, the Ukrainian gov is not a gov of the people of Ukraine.
Ukraine casualties:
> 200,000 KIA
> 300,000 wounded
Does not include desertions, surrendered, and captured.
A casualty ratio of 1.2 to 1 is a rout. Ukraine’s casualty ratio is in excess of 20:1.
Unless White Westerners for a change rebel in mass this death and destruction is a win/win for our overlords.
Destroy Russia and set the stage for going full bore against China.
Whoops that isn’t working so plan B:
End up with a financial and humanitarian crisis that they will correct by transferring more wealth and power to themselves while lowering yet further the birthrate and crushing freedom even further.
So they win either way unless Whites for once get a clue and say enough is enough. I am not betting on this option.
Who are these Whites you talk about ?
Gentiles, goyim!
Morons infiltrate every comment section.
There were many artillery barrages inflicted on US troops along the DMZ in Viet Nam during the siege of Khe Sahn in early 1968. All we could do was sit in a hole if we could find one and wait it out knowing that if a round hit the bunker we were in, it was all over for us.
After the first barrage at Dong Ha, we dug new underground bunkers in the heavy clay soil (like class 5 that is used for roads) with a ramp leading from the door of our hooch down into the bunker with a sharp left turn into the bunker itself.
We use to place the new guys closest to the door so we could sweep them up with us and drag them into the bunker. After a while, we would even sleep with our boots on and one arm through our rifle slings so we could take them with us.
One of the off-the-wall concerns was trying to time our visits to an outhouse (two-holers) so we wouldn’t get caught sitting with our pants down around our ankles. We used screen covered 55 gallon fuel barrels as urinals and it wasn’t unusual to for some unlucky guy caught out in the open to jump into one for cover during a barrage.
As I watch these videos, all the memories come back, but it only lasted for a few months. Only two months for me as I rotated home before the siege ended.
The TOS is a fantastic weapon for what it does – more evidence of russian excellence at staying focused on a single core capability for a weapon.
I gotta think they’re losing a bunch of them in Ukraine though – getting 3 to 6 km from the front before launching a big obvious barrage of oversized rockets is a good way to get bumped by the sort of weapon you profiled first, or by the capable russian ATGMs.
Not at all surprising that we’ve seen a fair few cooked out TOS and videos of them going up like this (horribly narrated) one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDF4PV4HznA
That’s why these are mounted on a MBT chassis.
War is still hell.
I support Russia and understand why the invasion was necessary. But what is shown in these videos is sickening.
My heart goes out to the soldiers on both sides whose lives no longer belong to themselves and can go up in smoke at any moment, without prior notice, for hours and days on end.
Ukraine should stop the carnage, which avails them nothing.
As an armchair General of note, I do believe this shit show ended sometime ago. It’s all about lift off and fu$k off without anyone noticing the Afghan similarities.
Do they bomb China next or go local and bomb Florida.
China is full of attitude and as pesky as the Russians, so Orange Faced Florida it is. (OFF)
Daily Mail here was running a headline yesterday that British troops need to be ready for deployment to Ukraine. Was based on an article in “Soldier” by the army’s senior warrant or non commissioned officer, who confusingly in reality is a commissioned officer anyway it seems. Such an article by a serving soldier must have had some official “consent”, I would think.
Anyway, a quick scan of the comments to the article suggests that even Daily Mail readers do not support such a move. Despite the corporate propaganda (of which that newspaper has played a major role, except the Peter Hitchens column) many people seem to realise that Russia is winning and that the Ukrainian regime is definitely not a cause worth fighting for. Occasional comments claiming Putin is an aggressor get multiple replies refuting this, saying he just stood up for himself and stating that we have no intention of dying to preserve American hegemony.
Either the Russians have suddenly got world class at emptying armies of people who can write colloquial British English on the web (!) or else broad support for this cluster in Ukraine is not what we are told it is.
https://t.co/AsVXE1AOI6
If the corrupt US government would reinstate a draft like they used to there would be an instant civil war. The corruption in government can no longer be covered up and even the slow witted are starting to realize just how evil the warmongering US government is. Their chickens will come home to roost.
It’s nonsense. Would take like a year just to assemble a NATO Army to enter Ukraine like it took a year to assemble to enter Iraq in first gulf war. Then they won’t be able to hide 200,000 deaths if they would even persevere that hard. Western militaries/people can’t handle those casualties before crying uncle unlike Russians and Ukrainians. It’s even worse now with woke military and divided country. White boys arnt signing up to get told they are racists and must get passed over for promotions and minorities don’t wanna fight for “white supremacist” USA. Recruiting is at all time lows in a terrible economy.
I totally agree! The west is fighting a proxy war because the U.S. foreign policy cabal know in the post Vietnam era that any significant home boy casualties to fight for the empire simply will not be tolerated. Other people need to do the dying. It’s not moral but it is what it is.
More like 5 months. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Operation Desert Shield began on January 16, 1991, with 42 days and nights of bombing, followed by the ground campaign. Remember, even Syria joined the coalition with troops–we don’t live in that world.
But then today, it might take a year to assemble a NATO army, as you suggest–so they likely won’t assemble a NATO army, but do it piecemeal, and insert them piecemeal as is being done now with weapons and materiel. Coordinating 30 countries is a fustercluck. I imagine NATO will want to avoid putting votes on the record as there will be dissenting voices. Political and military disaster nearly guaranteed.
Too much attention is focused on how slow the Russian advance has been, and far too little on the butcher’s bill.
It is horrible to contemplate the huge numbers of Ukrainian soldiers who have already been killed or wounded. More satisfying is the billions of dollars worth of military equipment and ammunition that has gone up in smoke long before ever reaching the front line.
Why are the Ukrainian soldiers so reluctant to surrender or rebel? Seriously.
Surrendering or rebelling is technically difficult. Opposing lines are sometimes miles apart, sometimes with minefield, and, even if some guys choose to surrender they have to cross that distance. And there are guys in the rear who are monitoring them, with 60 mortars at the ready.
Most surrenders happen in firefights, i.e. during pushes, which happen after the battle line has already been softened up, so not everyone even gets the chance.
There are instances of coordinated surrender, but these are rare and/or are not being reported very often, given the above-mentioned difficulties. There are being reports of relatively massed shootings for desertions.
Your blog oozes quality, Mr. Johnson, it shows you know what you’re talking about, not many others are even close to you, the style beats them as does the way you structure it, you make a point, you make it short but in depth, one doesn’t have time for elaborate pieces running for hours the shelf life of which is measured in days if not hours, many thanks for it.
You may like to look occasionally at the Ukrainian blogger Anatoli Sharij on u-tube, it’s in Russian but someone may translate it for you if you don’t speak the language, the guy’s superb, has good intelligence, the Ukrainian crowd backing him back home runs into millions.
Here’s Sharij’s latest vlog, it’s on Dugin and the tragic deaths of his daughter, Sharij reckons it’s the Ukrainians behind it, he has a piece of indirect evidence to prove it, he discovered a video published two days before the car blew up on one of the Ukrainian agitprop TV programmes ‘One-to-One’ in a slot called ‘Groshi’ (pennies or peanuts), you can see it at 4:55min, the Ukrainian anchorman is saying ‘Dugin is running Putin, he’s Putin’s brains .. ….
‘That’s not true at all, it’s a lie, nobody has been talking about Dugin for years’, Sharij says and is right, Dugin hasn’t been in the news since 2019 the latest, the slot on Groshi was broadcast deliberately, it cannot be a coincidence that two days before Dugin was scheduled to get blown up (regretfully, it was his daughter that lost her life) his ‘importance’ for Putin had to be established, elaborated on, reminded of, not a coincidence then, but a well prepared assassination attempt (not unakin to the assassination of the Iranian general few years ago).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trnl_fNgDZs
This will not go down well in Ukraine Baron reckons, if anything it will not just put many young men off, it may hit the moral of the fighting troops were they to come across it.
This commercial aiming to recruit the members of the LGBT community into the Ukrainian Forces could only have been conceived by some one who knows FA about the belief system, the mores and deeply ingrained customs and habits of the Slavonic tribes of either Ukraine or Russia, it almost feels as if the creators of it wanted to turn the society against the current regime:
https://politikus.info/video/146049-oficialnyyrolik-minoborony-ukrainy-o-mobilizacii-sodomitov-v-vsu.html
It reminds me of a tweet that the US embassy in Afghanistan posted before the fall of Kabul. It was celebrating Pride Month and explaining what an awesome western tradition it is. Am sure that helped to rally support against the Taliban.
Forgive me, but I guess you are the Baron who comments at The Spectator. I always found your comments there highly informative. I stopped subscribing though, mainly because I felt the Ukraine War coverage was so one sided and context free.
I then found Mr Johnson’s excellent blog and various other outlets such as The Duran and The Dreizin Report that seemed to be far closer to reality. Miss reading Douglas Murray and Taki though.
An identical move by Baron, Stephen, he also decided to quit the Spectator because his postings got removed without any explanation, so much for the rag shouting ‘we’re the defenders of free speech’, it’s now mostly individuals that stick labels on people, advance no arguments, pity because some of the writing’s first class (say) Liddle, Shriver and others, this blog though beats then hands down, and thanks for the compliment, you’re too kind.
An identical move by Baron, Stephen, he also decided to quit the Spectator because his postings got removed without any explanation, so much for the rag shouting ‘we’re the defenders of free speech’, it’s now mostly individuals that stick labels on people, advance no arguments, pity because some of the writing’s first class (say) Liddle, Shriver and others, this blog though beats then hands down, and thanks for the compliment, you’re too kind.
Great minds think alike, as they say! I also miss Lionel Shriver and Rod Liddle, amongst a few others.
there are A Lot of lgbtkhgc azovists..
check out t.me/hackberegini for documents and pictures.
Beregini is a Russian hacker group.
That Kub drone would work great on the southern border….
To paraphrase The Boss…”ooohhhh, I’m on fire!”
ROFL!!
European perspective. Russians are fighting regular polish troops around Kherson. Different messages are sent to the media in the UK for a military preparation while Generals who never experienced any combat duties ramp up in a full NATO intervention. Economic prospects are so grim that I would not be surprised that they intend to cover it up with a war. Do they have any idea of the consequences ? Not even sure of that.
https://sonar21.com/a-deadly-glimpse-of-russias-bombardment-of-ukrainian-troops/#comment-83627
Regular polish troops? Any proof to back this up?
Forgive my gross humor but the first drone looks like something out of an updated Dr. Strangelove with its sexual innuendo, minus the incomparable Slim Pickens hoopin and a hollering as he rides that wild thing to Hell.
I’ve seen videos of folks fleeing Keeeeeeeeev. The rumor is that the city will be heavily attacked by Russia this Wednesday. The assassin of Ms. Dugin has been identified, she’s on the run into Estonia and is a bonafide Azov battalion (Nazi) female member. Things will be getting dicey I think.
The picture and the name of the alleged assassin has been made public, Bill, you can see her arriving into Russia (#1), entering the building where Ms Dugan lived #2, then leaving Russia, her car getting frisked #3, the last bit of the video #4, is the Mini, the same car, different number plates, these are the ‘screens’ whatever that may mean.
Some of the postings aren’t very complimentary about the FSB, some about the girl, a few about Estonia.
https://politikus.info/video/146065-fsb-rf-publikuet-video-s-podozrevaemoy-v-ubiystve-dari-duginoy.html
I wonder why the frontline is not pushed to new lines on daily basis, in correspondence with the Russian warmachine. But Larry don’t you think “demilitarization” means that the Russians pretend that Ukrainian “has a chance “ – and just let fresh soldiers show up and be eliminated ?
At the same time: conquered land can be cleaned up for land mines and shelters Ukraine and NATO has prepared the last 8 years in Donbas.
I think the Russian literally mean
That the area of Ukraine will have zero military left. It will be a zone of eunuchs.
Next job ….some NATO countries
Thanks for your blog
Best regards
Frank (from Denmark)
Honestly that is what I would do. I have seen russian arty positions that are camoflagued and has a “lived in” look. That means they are not worried about being attacked and not moving to shift positions to avoid counter battery fire.
I would shell Ukrainian fixed positions, use my drone to watch them rotate in fresh troops, then shell them again. Russians would just be close in enough to fix them in place. Keep shelling until they give up reinforcing the position. Only then send in the assault.
During ww2 one can only guess the enemy disposition…with drones you can watch in real time and keep shelling.
I once read an excellent explanation from an ex-military as to why the Russian army is not advancing faster. The explanation was a matter of simple mathematics on the one hand and “demilitarization” and “denazification” as two main objectives of the military campaign on the other hand (the objective is not a land grab).
From the artillery perspective, when non-precision shelling is used there is a certain mathematical probability of hitting the target vs. hitting 30, 50, 100 meters too far from the target. When one starts the shelling, the first 10s or even 100s miss the targets. But with the help of the drones the accuracy improves dramatically after that. And the targets are the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. So, if you keep bombarding the same area of fortifications day after day after day, your artillery precision is extremely high. However, if you start moving from one place to another, the accuracy goes down again.
That clown / cocaine-addict “running” Ukraine keeps sending more and more troops to the same fortifications where tens of thousands already died (and that phone call from Sharij confirms the attitude these neo-Nazis have towards their own soldiers “when these ten get slaughtered, I’ll just send you another ten”).
So, since they keep sending more and more warm bodies, and since the Russian army artillery already has a high precision of shelling specific areas where more and more Nazis are sent, it helps:
(a) eliminate more and more Nazis while
(b) minimizing the cost of shelling, and
(c) minimizing the loss of own lives.
As harsh as it sounds the cost per “denazified / demilitarized” neo-Nazi goes down with every additional batch sent to the front line. Why move and increase the cost, reduce precision, and lose more people, when they keep coming themselves to get “denazified”.
The only substantial downside of this approach, of course, is that neo-Nazis keep shelling Donetsk and small towns nearby because the front line was not moved far enough for them to be out of reach. However, as this terrorist regime has already shown when Russia liberates cities and towns that just 6 months ago were considered “Ukrainian” these terrorists immediately start bombing civilians in those cities and towns. They don’t consider them “Ukrainian” or even human. Hell, they are even bombing the nuclear plant that could wipe out millions of lives of even those who still live on what is still considered “Ukraine”… They simply don’t care.
From that perspective the trade-off the Russian military is making – move the front line faster trying to increase the distance between Donbass civilians and Ukrainian Nazis vs. “denazify” them at a much faster rate and efficiency is the optimal one, IMO.
Those drones are smaller than I would have guessed given the destructiveness . Based on the explosion patterns they appear to use shaped charges. Pretty impressive where the drone flew right into the tank gun (and blew a hole out the back, presumably with horrid (but instantaneous) effects on the crew.
Ut wasn’t too long ago that GEN (Ret) Petraeus claimed Switchblade Loitering Munitions (US “kamakazi drones”) sent to Ukraine would be a “game changer”.
If one country can make a “kamakazi drone”, then another can also.
True “game changers” far and few between. In late WWII, Germany introduced jet fighters but that didn’t stop the air war from being fought entirely over their heads, and didn’t make but a small dent in the allied bombing campaign. Similarly, Japan developed a fighter-interceptor slightly superior to the F6F Hellcat, but too late, with too few trained pilots and too little fuel.
The real “game changer” is almost never a single weapon or handful of weapons. It’s the entirety of the political, economic, and military strategy, actual and potential forces available, operational campaigns, and tactical engagements. Bad strategy can’t be solved by “wonder weapons”.
Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, says that Ukrainian casualties up to today are… 9000 KIA.
hum hum…what a joke
cocaine just arrived from Columbia in kiev
Hello Larry.
My question has nothing to do with the article, but I have to ask it.
I have a question, and maybe you can answer it. How is it that the vast majority of states have clowns at their heads? Trudeau in Canada is a former part-time theater teacher, Bojo is an autistic jester (in the wrong sense of the word), Draghi is a Goldman Sach banker, Macron is a fag married to a pedophile woman, Biden is just an old senile who has regular brain strokes, Zelensky a failed actor, Scholz is an invertebrate mollusk. What is happening with western leadership? And it looks like it’s only getting worse.
It is a puzzle and a worry. The current batch of leaders, exempting Putin and Hungary’s Orban, are dolts.
This is the best and the most succinct characterization of the current western “leadership” quality I’ve read in a while! Right on! 100%!!!
Thanks for your appearance on the Duran, dear. Here’s a further hint for you:
Western schools have been teaching that Russia is the enemy for decades — fueled by the Bible’s use of “rosh” as the King of the North who brings on the Final Battle, but Russia is “Rus” while opium is “rosh,” and that is the same word in Genesis 3:15 that Eve will crush.
Strong’s words 7218 and 7219 are pronounced the same as this “rosh” that threatens the world right before Messiah appears, which is why so many “Christian” lawmakers have been going along with this push towards an endtimes, since a “Messianic Age” would entail the Second Coming of Jesus, right? Making more sense now?
In Ezekiel 38:2–3: “Son of man, set your face against Gog, the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal . . . .’” New King James Version.
Here the UK-rainians and their assets think “rosh” means Russia, but Russia is “Rus” and poppies are “rosh,” so the phrase “the prince of Rosh” is actually “the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal” or “the leader of the head of Meshech and Tubal” with no mention of a place called “Rosh” because that word means “chief” or “prince,” leaving only Meshech and Tubal, two places in Turkey where poppies were king. So the Final Battle will be with opium, not with Russia, and God as always will have the last laugh, along with oceans of mercy. Be well.
thanks for the explanation.
The dirty little (not so ) secret is that this war was conceived, instigated, and is being carried out by a group of Malthusian eugenicists who find the loss of life that results wholly desirable.
I understand what fuel air bombs are, but the first time i saw a video of TOS munition striking their target i though it was an airstrike
It reminds me of the line by Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. “The horror…!”
I feel compassion for the average Ukrainian male who is forcefully conscripted and placed into the jaws of that – thresher.
That video is not of the M777 towed howitzer, but the M109 self propelled howitzer.
You probably want to correct this.
I can not speak to Tony Cartalucci’s aka Brian Berletic’s geopolitical analytic skills, however, as an American expat living in Thailand I do question his personal integrity as it relates to the average Thai citizen. If I can not trust that a person has integrity I can not in good conscience support their work. For this reason I have begun to avoid many of my favorite “lefty” shows thinking that if they are this easily duped by Berletic how do I trust anything they are telling me?