• tal
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      4 months ago

      Ah, okay, gotcha.

      So, there are a couple issues:

      • I’d guess that Russia is able to prevent a surface ship from approaching Russia in any ocean unless someone can fight an offensive air and naval war to get control of that ocean.

      • I’m guessing (you said “container ship”) that the idea might be to use a concealed civilian vessel that then unloads some kind of surprise attack. While disguised military ships have been used to conduct armed warfare before, the last time I can think of an example was British Q-ships in World War I; I’m not sure that this is still legal.

      • Turkey has closed the Turkish Straits to warships due to the conflict, so technically no warships are supposed to pass, from either side. I’m I believe that it violates the convention governing this to either tell Turkey that the warship isn’t actually a warship or if Turkey knows but preferentially lets warships through. That being said, I guess theoretically Ukraine could assemble such an attack using a ship somewhere far away from Ukraine.

      • My guess is that if Ukraine had a lot of long-range cruise missiles, they’d probably be using them in their own theater of operations, as they’re pretty short on them.

      • I don’t think that Russia is using strategic bombers for the glide bombing attacks, so whatever the benefits of hitting them, I’m not sure that it would be a counter to the glide bomb attacks. kagis Yeah, this has the (much more numerous) Su-34 being used:

        On or just before Thursday, an air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber lobbed a single FAB-3000 bomb with pop-out wings and satellite guidance at a multi-story building Russian intelligence had identified as a staging base for Ukrainian troops in Lyptsi, 10 miles north of Kharkiv in northern Ukraine.

      • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Strategic bombers are used to launch the hypersonics at Ukraine. They are rarer so a high value target. If they can cut of kinzal at its roots.

        • tal
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          4 months ago

          That’s true, though IIRC there are two planes, and I think that one of them – and the more-numerous one – is a variant of some multirole fighter.

          kagis

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal

          Launch platform

          • MiG-31BM/K
          • Tu-22M3M
          • Su-34 (reportedly)
          • Su‐57 (planned)

          Looks like two confirmed, another possible, another eventually (though I can’t imagine using the rare, intended-for-another-purposes Su-57 if they could use the others).