MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]

I think certain air defence systems have faced heavy attrition in the past few months, more than ammunition shortages. Tor systems used to be quite resilient to Ukrainian attacks, but they’ve been falling victim to them recently. With less physical air defence systems, gaps start to appear. Especially if Russia is going to double down on heavily defending Moscow, then that’s a lot of systems that cannot be redeployed outside of there. The Moscow air defence ring is massive, from the cold war to the modern day.

My only question would be, where are the MiG-31 and Su-35 Combat Air Patrols? The MiG-31 in particular was built for this mission towards the end of the cold war, shooting down low flying cruise missiles. If cruise missile strikes are going to become more frequent, they will be needed.

First successful Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missile attack of the war against Russia this morning:

Videos

Flamingo missile almost 1000km inside Russia:

End result. Even just one or two of these do a lot more damage than one way attack drones.

This is notable because of what the Flamingo cruise missile is, an easy target to shoot down in theory. It’s not a sophisticated stealth cruise missile or anything like that. It took Ukraine a long time to actually achieve a successful strike like this, because of factors around that, accuracy when the missile did penetrate air defences, etc. But it could show that Russian air defences are increasingly strained if more successful flamingo attacks happen in future.

An explanation of the Flamingo cruise missile, there are one or two inaccuracies but the gist is correct

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How convenient is the timing with the AH-64 shootdown. Even had the usual stories from Barak Ravid (I think) about an Israeli-USA rift after Israel’s sole strikes beforehand.

Also B-2 Spirit stealth bombers in in Australia for annual military exercises, and an additional B-52H has arrived in RAF Fairford in the UK, from Minot AFB in the USA.

like we had 100+ comment last week over a succdem mayor and yet an exchange of bombing bigger than anything else since the “ceasefire” is getting like 0 activity

Much like war, Hexbear never changes.

Everyone spies on everyone. The nature of the planned Israeli air launched ballistic missile attack in October/November 2024 (I think), was revealed from a US spying report being leaked, spying on Israeli munitions loading before the attack took place. I think the leaker in now in prison.

US Marine Corps F-35Bs to… Finland?

8x Marine Corps F-35B 5th generation short takeoff and vertical landing stealth aircraft have arrived in Finland as of 15h ago. Why? I don’t know. I’m guessing as part of NATO military exercises on the Finnish border, the “Northern Star” exercises. F-35s operating from remote locations is part of Nordic defence strategy, Finland has purchased 64x F-35As (conventional landing and take-off), and Norway’s 52x F-35As, of which they have taken full delivery of, are equipped with a drouge parachutes to assist braking action in icy weather on makeshift runways/highways. Italian F-35Bs were taking off and landing on highways a few days ago in Finland as part of the “Immenent Field 2026” military exercises. Finland has not yet taken delivery of it’s first F-35A, it looks like allied F-35Bs are playing the role for now in military exercises as Finland prepares for delivery. But a weird deployment all round in 2026.

It’s an interesting look into Nordic defence tactics, they intend to distribute even their highest end weaponry on makeshift bases to keep them in the fight against an adversary with long range strike. The Nordics do not have the luxury to base their fighter aircraft out of range of Russian long range strike for various reasons (not enough mid air refueling capacity, geographical constraints, not enough air defence to intercept long range high end weapons), so they have to operate well within in the Russian weapon engagement zone in a hypothetical war.

Source, Armchair Admiral on X/Twitter

Footage from inside the eye of Hurricane Melissa

That eye wall is massive.

Sustained windspeed is up to 175mph/280kph now.

Ukraine long range strike capabilities, Part 1.

There’s a lot of misinformation and straight up factually incorrect information here, so I thought it would be interesting to try clear that up.

The first one is Fire Point’s FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. AP News had an exclusive on it recently. Despite looking similar to a V1 buzz bomb from WW2, it shares no technology with it, no pulse jet engine. The basic concept of the FP-5 missile is more similar to the Tu-141 reconnaissance drone or AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missile. There are major similarities to the Milanion FP-5 cruise missile in design, but with some adaptations for Ukrainian production, to build the missiles with the parts (warheads and engines) available to Ukraine.

As for specifications, it’s a massive missile, with a wingspan of 6m, a length of 14-15m I’d estimate. The missile’s maximum payload/warhead weight is 1150kg, the jet turbine engine is 350kg dry, which leaves 4500kg for the missile’s carbon composite or fibreglass body and control systems, jet fuel and lubricants, for a maximum take off weight of 6000kg. Range is said to be 3000km, and a maximum flight time of 4 hours. Maximum speed is stated to be 950kph, cruise speed 850-900kph, altitude ceiling of 5km. Navigation is jam resistant GNSS and INS. As for accuracy CEP50 is estimated at 14m.

As for the warhead and jet turbine engine, that’s where it gets the most interesting. The “1000+kg warhead” is likely just two FAB-500 gravity bombs shoved in the front of the missile. We can see an M-62 low drag FAB-500 poking out of the front. Ukraine has 1000s of these from Soviet era stockpiles. The jet turbine engine is the Ivchenko AI-25, an engine originally produced by the Ukrainian SSR for the Yak-40 trijet aircraft, and later for use in the L-39 Albatross jet trainer aircraft. Over 9000 have been produced, and the engine is still in production today by Ukraine’s Motor Sich company. A crude solution in terms of warhead and propulsion, but it’s using what Ukraine has available to them. The FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile is actually longer and heavier than the L-39 Albatross, and carries a lot more fuel.

There’s a lot of questions about the range, speed, and thrust requirements of the FP-5 Flamingo missile, are the stated figures realistic? To break it down, At maximum thrust of 16.9kN (it only needs to last for a few hours in a cruise missile vs 1000s of hours in an aircraft, so it can run at maximum thrust permanently given sufficient cooling), the AI-25 consumes 17 g/(kN⋅s) of fuel. That’s 1035kg of fuel an hour, or 4140kg of fuel over four hours. Given a 1150kg payload, that still leaves 360kg for engine lubricants, the missile body and control systems, and potentially even more fuel. A 1000kg payload leaves 510kg for that. 3000km over 4 hours is 750kph, coincidentally the maximum speed of the L-39 at 5km altitude. The Tu-141, similar in size and weight to the FP-5 and a better comparison than the L-39 (but with 19.6kN of thrust), had a maximum speed of 1100km, and a cruise speed of 1000km at 6km altitude. So is the range realistic? I’d say yes, given a 100kph lower cruise speed for the FP-5 than initially claimed. There’s enough fuel for it. Maximum claimed speeds can likely only be achieved at the altitude ceiling of 5km, where such a missile would be easily detected and shot down.

As for the survivability of the FP-5? I wouldn’t say that it’s high, the first S-300 air defence systems were built to shoot down such targets 40 years ago. The FP-5 has a massive radar cross section and heat signature. It’s not a low observable or stealth cruise missile by any means. An easy target for air defence. But the FP-5s. crude design and readily available key parts in Ukraine will allow for fast initial production, and if just one gets through, that’s 2x FAB-500s on target. A lot more damage than a one way attack drone or even a Neptune cruise missile. Given that the main oil refinery in Rostov oblast has been burning for five days non stop, and that Russian air raid channels reported on Flamingo cruise missiles in Rostov oblast, that was possibly the first target.

As for sustained long production rates, the biggest obstacle is the engine. The construction is easy and FAB-500s are readily available. But, after the initial supply of engines that Ukraine can get their hands on are used up, they’ll have to rely on new build engines from Motor Sich. Building large numbers of such big engines under wartime conditions will be very challenging, if not impossible.