55 thoughts on “Russia’s Destruction Continues”

    1. I don’t think luck has much to do with it at this point.

      Now that the factory has been seriously dinged, the sporting proposition is how many Soyuzes does Russia have in inventory and does Ukraine know where those are? I’m thinking it most likely does. Soyuz cores and boosters are pretty sizable. Hard to move without being seen by those ICEYE SAR-sats the Ukes have been getting imagery from for awhile now.

      I think the Russians saw this coming. Their “space situational awareness” sats have been crowding some of the ICEYEs for awhile. The only way to shut the ICEYEs down is to disable them. The Russians won’t do that for at least two reasons:

      1) The data for a lot of targets is already in Ukrainian hands. Smacking an ICEYE or two – or even all of them – won’t be helpful at this point.

      2) ICEYE is a Finnish company and Finland is a shiny new NATO member. As with the various terrestrial drone games Russia has been playing with other NATO countries for awhile, the Russkies like to stay juuust this side of any unambiguous Article 5 violations.

      Bottom line? The Soyuz works is almost certainly not the first target struck by Ukraine whose corrdinates were obtained for them by ICEYE. It sure won’t be the last either.

  2. And you know “the factory has been serious dinged” because …….
    Do tell us how you know.
    Did you hear it from a confidental source, a media outlet said so.
    Did you read it on X or Facebook?

    1. Do you assert that the R-7 plant is unscathed? On what do you base that particular mega-dose of copium? Even the most pro-war Russian social media types are admitting Russia has not been doing well. And yet you have been maintaining, against all evidence to the contrary for well over four years now, that Russia is still winning its suicidal war and will emerge victorious Real Soon Now.

      1. Ukraine has been doing better the last six months or so since Trump let them expand their attacks but neither side is doing well.

        It is easy to find Ukrainian drone porn on X, however both countries do quite well with drones. Russia also has a kill zone and are still able to put up hundreds of long range strike drones and tens of missiles a day while stockpiling.

        When Ukraine hits wildberries or Russian launch facilities, its a big story. It is showing Ukraine’s expanding capabilities. Russia also hits targets in Ukraine, which doesn’t get the same coverage. Typically, when Russian strikes get covered in media it is because an apartment building got hit.

        Ukraine is doing better but for now it is still a stalemate.

        1. It is not a stalemate. Ukraine continues to incrementally improve both its defense and offense. Russia’s offense is weakening and its defense seems barely extant anymore in most places.

          Ukraine has made major advances in shutting down Russian logistics. Almost nothing can now be sent into Crimea by either land or sea rendering that territory increasingly untenable for both Russian civilians – who are fleeing in droves – and Russian military forces. The Sea of Azov and the Caspian Sea have joined the Black Sea as Ukrainian lakes.

          Russia’s arms exports have collapsed as have its petroleum and gas exports. Ukraine, meanwhile, is inking lucrative deals with deep-pocketed clients such as the Gulf States, Germany and Taiwan for access to its drone technology.

          The Russo-Ukraine War is a “stalemate” only in the sense that not much land is changing hands in either direction. By that definition, the Western Front in WW2 was also a “stalemate” between the fall of France and the Normandy invasion four years later. But it was actually a time during which the initiative passed from German hands to those of the Allies. Losing a war is often like the description of bankruptcy in that it happens slowly, over a long period of time, then all at once.

          1. Russia are also making improvements. A few years ago, people were saying Russia was incapable of change and yet they adapted. Russian space launch facilities were targeted because they are deploying their own version of starlink. NK is supplying Russia with missiles and soldiers. Russian drones and operators are as good as the Ukrainians.

            The Black Sea can’t be a Ukrainian lake when Ukraine can not use it. A large amount of their income come from grain exports.

            Russia is certainly taking a beating but so is Ukraine. It is easy to get caught up in pro-Ukrainian news as it is presented to an English speaking audience but while success is trumpeted, failure is smothered.

            Could this year be an inflection point? Maybe but the future is uncertain. As things stand right now, it is a stalemate. Four years from now, it might not be but how it breaks can still go either way.

          2. Russia keeps trying to make improvements, but is far less successful than Ukraine at doing so. Russian drones and operators are not in a class with those of Ukraine as witness how many of both Ukraine succeeds in killing on any given day.

            Russia is at a disadvantage precisely because it has no access to Starlink and Ukraine does. Many of Ukraine’s weapons have Starlink terminals incorporated for unjammable comms and guidance.

            The Russians are barely started on Rassvet deployment and, at current rates, they will lose the war before a useful constellation is on-orbit – if it ever is. The Ukrainians will keep plinking away at Russian rocket production and launch facilities and it won’t take much damage to shut both down.

            Ukraine still exports grain via the port of Odessa and the Russians aren’t able to interfere very much anymore. The tattered remains of the Russian Black Sea Fleet are locked up in Novorossiysk and being pummeled to bits at their moorings. No Russian logistics traffic can now move across either the Sea of Azov or the Caspian Sea.

            North Korean artillery shells and missiles are so poorly made that they must be remanufactured in Russia before use and, even then, often fail anyway. And Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the remanufacturing sites.

            North Korean troops supplied to this point have proven little better than the meat waves of Russians that have failed to get Russia much of anything for more than a year. They are being killed the same as Russians and there are a lot fewer of them anyway. They aren’t a significant factor any more than are the Africans Russia has bamboozled into fighting in Ukraine. Ukrainian buzzards have never eaten so well. It’s a wonder they can still fly.

            Four years from now, Russia may no longer even exist as a nation-state. But it is certainly not going to win its war. Ukraine will be the victor and will not need an additional four years to achieve that victory.

  3. Berger says :
    It was not immediately clear which facilities at the sprawling Progress facility were damaged. There were some open-source reports that a missile struck a building that houses a clean room for avionics—perhaps a reference to the electronics production Zelenskyy referred to.

    Oooh open-source reports. They never lie or make stuff up. Way to exercise discernment Eric. For all we really know Zelensky blew up an outhouse.

    1. I suspect Harry Stranger and friends will soon have some fresh satellite imagery allowing at least a first-order bomb damage assessment. I haven’t gone looking for such stuff related to this particular incident, but every Ukrainian strike on a Russian industrial facility seems to soon enough be corroborated by cell phone video taken by ordinary Russians in the vicinity. I have no reason to suppose this incident will be any different.

      You assert, without any evidence, that reportage of Russian reverses in its suicidal war are false. What is false are the now pro forma Russian lies about all of the Ukrainian drones always being shot own but that falling debris caused some damage. The Ukrainians, it seems, have become masters at the game of precision falling debris strikes.

      1. wow, are you in Russia actually watching it happen? Or are you wrapped up in a fantasy that you can’t prove. Ever hear of AI generated video.

        1. No more than you are. And yet, while credulously accepting every obvious Russian bit of fabulism as gospel, you casually assert that all evidence of Russia’s disastrous losses during this misbegotten adventure are fake. You are, if nothing else, an interesting case study in the limits of human self-delusion.

          1. He has a point though. We know the legacy media lies all the time. Unless you have firsthand knowledge, we’re all relying on the media. It all depends on the needs of the democrat party.

          2. I don’t rely on legacy media to tell me anything. If it told me the sun rises in the East I would check it out. Ukraine and Russia don’t seem, in any case, to be much of a subject of interest to the legacy US media unless there’s some sort of Trump-bashing angle. If the US media thought Ukraine was important it would lie about it, that being what it does about everything it actually cares about. As is, it largely just says nothing at all.

  4. Ed, you are 100%. Dick assumes that I have opinions that I may or may not have. As you picked up, I was questioning the sources and he became discombobulated. 🙂

    1. I don’t have to assume anything about your opinions. They’re as transparent as glass.

      And you weren’t “questioning the sources,” you were flatly declaring them fake.

      I am not “discombobulated” about anything, least of all your pathetic attempts to rewrite grim reality to suit your preferred Russia-the-Invincible narrative.

  5. It is a good thing we aren’t so reliant on Russia any more or this would be a bad development. The Musk haters were against him then and now without realizing what was at stake for our space industry and national defense just as they don’t realize all the help Musk has given to Ukraine.

      1. Yes, they do. And any resulting damage to the US is viewed by these types as a feature, not a bug.

    2. Yes. Russia can now finish dying miserably with barely any negative consequence to the US, especially its space endeavors.

      That is, unfortunately, far less true of the coming collapse of the PRC with which we are still unreasonably entwined. Despite the record pace of US re-industrialization, I suspect that the US will still find itself scrambling in many ways when the PRC suddenly goes poof and all of the PRC-based trans-Pacific supply chains are snapped at once. At least the US space industry won’t be among those significantly hit.

  6. The question I have is how the drone technology will affect the USA. War has not touched the continental US for decades. With drone technology will that change?

      1. Then again, once UK and France are Muslim countries, they’ll still have nuclear weapons and intercontinental delivery systems. I’m not a Doomer, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still fun to think about.

        1. That prospect seems rather less certain now than it did even a year or so ago. I think the Muslims, like the erstwhile German army, have attacked before they’re really ready and the pushback will be severe. Spines appear to be slowly stiffening all over Europe.

          2. I’m not talking about the current feckless, and even collaborationist dhimmi administrations in those places. I refer to the figures who will be replacing them in two or three more years.

          3. We’ll see in a couple of years, if we still live (at our age, a valid question). Who do you think are the feckful ones will be elected? In France, I would not be surprised to see Melanchon instead of Le Pen. AfD rank and file in concentration camps? Farage? As well hope for the return of Boris Johnson (speaking of feckless) …

          4. I believe recent legal proceedings have now cleared the way for Le Pen to run in France.

            Farage looks increasingly likely to be able to form a viable coalition at the next election, which will certainly include the come-out-of-nowhere Restore Party of Rupert Lowe that is now in roughly fourth place in popularity in national polls.

            Germany is, admittedly, a tougher call. But I don’t think the various efforts of the establishment parties there to outlaw AfD will succeed – and they certainly don’t communicate a sense of confidence to ordinary Germans. Like Democrats here, the German establishment just seems to keep doubling down on stupid.

    2. The answer to your question is most definitely yes. Given the amount of Chinese owned farmland conveniently located near US military bases, odds are the attack systems are already in place or soon will be. US military bases have adopted the policy of General Shorter from Pearl Harbor. A high percentage of our military aircraft are parked outside without protection. Short range drones armed with explosives will have a field day.

      Of course, the opening attacks are likely to be cyber and against our utilities infrastructure.

        1. Likely so – if there are any such attacks at all. Though I must say that the War Dept.’s recent decision to directly fight back on cyber-incursions – and to use private-sector cyber security and hacker groups to do so – is an encouraging sign. It’s always good to show the other side they need to keep their heads down and cannot simply snipe away with impunity.

    3. One hopes the advent of drone technology prompts some serious Pentagon attention to countermeasure development and modifications to force structure. The future utility of large armored vehicles is now quite problematic, for example. At a minimum, the whole concept of “air superiority” needs a thorough revisit. So does the concept of “air defense.”

      The US is not significantly vulnerable to drone attack on its national territory or that of its possessions from outside. Drones don’t have transoceanic range and we have a blue water Navy capable of keeping potential drone-carrying ships and subs away from our shores. Launching a significant cross-border drone strike from the national territories of either Canada or Mexico also seems untenable.

      One possible weakness that needs attention is the potential for an “Operation Spider Web”-style attack based on drones hidden in cargo containers aboard container ships docked in US ports.

      A potential wild card that also needs some serious attention is the possibility of a distributed campaign of short-range drone strikes on key US military facilities launched from within US borders. Most domestic military bases tend to resemble office parks or shopping malls more than fortresses and have barely more on-site security.

      The PRC infiltrated an unknown, but significant, number of its military personnel into the US during the open-borders lunacy of the treasonous Biden regime and one must assume they are still here and preparing to conduct future mischief.

      1. Aside from the obvious Pearl Harbor/Spider Web attack from hostile powers, there’s also a big risk that Antifa/Code Pink types will start using Ukrainian style drones on both military assets and people they perceive as domestic enemies (every target is Hitler!).

        The world might go through a period of instability where idealogues, zealots, and nutcases have access to very sophisticated attack drones with A.I. terminal guidance and good EMP resistance. That would turn almost every high-value asset into a target, and the inevitable response might involve lots and lots of round-ups and arrests, and trying to put the A.I. drone genie back in the box.

        1. Code Pink seems to consist mostly of elderly white women. Street fighters they are not.

          Antifa average much younger and more male but are mostly college students/recent grads with a taste for cosplaying at “revolution,” backed by a small, but hard-core, corps of professional agitators. Drone kills aren’t their style – or capability, really – and would quickly result in their extinction under this administration.

          Any lefties who decide to go for significant body counts will quickly find that far better trained and more experienced vigilance committees will spring up to put paid to them and their enablers. That “by any means necessary” thing can cut both ways.

          1. Low probability, but high potential consequences if it does happen.

            Which is why we shouldn’t be stumbling around on the periphery of Iran but should be closing for the kill. Wiping out the remains of the Iranian regime would have a tremendously tonic effect on the attitudes of other US opponents, especially the PRC.

      2. Open Google Maps and look at the satellite views of Air Force bases. Many of them have aircraft parked outdoors with no protection. Tinker AFB, OK is a good example. In addition to B-1s, B-52s, and other aircraft there receiving depot maintenance, they have a lot of operational AWACS and tanker aircraft parked on various aprons. Not even a simple wire netting above to stop small armed quadrotors from destroying at least a couple dozen irreplaceable aircraft.

        Now do the same for other military bases in the US and overseas. It appears they’ve learned nothing from Ukraine.

        1. Yes. Most US military bases are pretty much the definition of soft targets, especially the AFBs.

          There seems to be a fair-sized contingent in the US military who don’t want to learn anything from Ukraine. I haven’t yet figured out if Sec’y. Hegseth is one of them or not.

          It seems we always wind up getting into wars with a senior officer corps that isn’t remotely up to speed. Gen. Marshall weeded these types out, for the most part, even before US involvement in WW2. It would be nice if we had someone like that doing the same now. Hegseth doesn’t seem to mind butchering at least certain sacred cows. I would feel a lot better if he was concentrating as hard on getting rid of mossbacked and last-war generals as he is getting rid of merely fat ones.

          1. There’s definitely been a shift from the ol’ days. There was a short period of time when USAF was transferring nuclear warheads around the continental US and happened to way-station at Chanute AFB (long since closed in the 80s cutbacks). Normally a part of AFTC (read school) the security went sky high for about a week, according to my dad, a civilian fire-fighter that worked there. With regular AP patrols with M16 toting guards in front of some of the hemispherical bunkers on base.

      3. The military has been working on it. There are the M-LIDS that were deployed to Gaza and there is a stryker system as well.

        It certainly complicates things when layered air defense has to move with the troops. The drone threat isn’t new, we have been dealing with the FPV style drones for many years but not on the scale of the war in Ukraine.

        In recent wargames, we haven’t faired well against drones, so whatever capabilities we have are not integrated across the military yet

        1. That’s a polite way of saying that at the most recent NATO war games, a group of Ukrainian “droneys” cleaned the freakin’ clocks of our armored divisions.

          Overconfidence, ignorance and arrogance were lethal early in WW2. We can’t afford that nonsense anymore now, but a lot of it seems to have crept back into the fabric of the US military. Hegseth has his work cut out for him. I would feel a lot better if I was more confident he knows both what needs doing and how to get it done.

      1. That would seem to be a slam-dunk. But the US has no opponent with the blue water naval capability of putting such craft close enough to American shores to be effective. The US, on the other hand, can build both expensive aircraft carriers and various classes of far smaller and cheaper drone carriers as well as provide the cover needed to get them usefully close to enemy shores.

          1. And China already has the means to militarize container ships. Not just containerized missiles and drones of various types but also connecting containers to form a sort of runway.

          2. Quite a few, I imagine. Sal Mercogliano could probably provide good numbers.

            Thing is, deploying drones from even a little way at sea or after tying up in port would only be effective against targets in or near the port. At least with typical FPV-type drones of modest range.

            Larger drones with longer ranges could be carried too, but fewer of them and each would likely take longer to deploy.

            And any such attack would be pretty much limited to the contents of the top tier of containers. To carry out attacks over a much larger area of CONUS, it would probably be more sensible to just off-load the Spider Web-type containers and, as the Ukrainians, did anent Russia, send them out on US trucks with US drivers to pre-planned destinations.

            Any such schemes would be potentially vulnerable to such simple countermeasures as random Coast Guard boardings and inspections at sea or in port for ships operated by geopolitical opponents or simply of murky ownership.

            Not to say that even a straightforward direct-from-the-ship attack couldn’t still be effective to a degree – the SpaceX Hawthorne Mothership, for example, is likely within FPV drone range of the Port of L.A./Long Beach and Space Force has a facility not much farther away.

            The best defense is probably routine coastal patrols by unmanned anti-drone drones. The same could be done near any potential inland target.

            Point defenses against drones should be considered for certain applications as well, including around defense plants and those now-nearly-defenseless military bases. I suspect a miniature Phalanx-like system based on a “nano-gun” that fires .22 shorts could probably be produced in quantity at a reasonable price. I daresay that an ordinary Starlink terminal could probably be made to serve as the radar for such a device – with suitable software mods of course.

            It’s going to be move and counter-move until we run out of serious opponents as a nation. That day may be closer than many think, but keeping a weather eye out and the powder dry in the meantime is certainly prudent.

    5. This is why Venezuela, Cuba, and similar countries have been featured so prominently in Trump’s foreign policy.

      1. They’re annoying, have been for a long time and they’re on our enemies list. And they’re also low-hanging fruit. Venezuela is already off the board. Cuba could be too if we would quit dinking around and finish the current regime there. And of course there’s Iran. Trump, unfortunately, is proving little better than previous Republican Presidents when it comes to really going for the throats of our enemies and finishing them quickly and finally.

  7. I suspect this will turn out like the “destruction” of the only Soyuz launch pad at Baikonur, where predictions were along the lines of no more launches for years, “if ever.” The answer turned out to be “a few months.” The entire LV is not manufactured at that site (the engines are made under license by Kuznetsov, for example, because Energomash is occupied making RD-170-based engines such as theRD-190). As it is, LVs are launch-site-delivered through early next year.

    1. Yes, I think Russia has a decent-sized inventory of previously-produced rockets stashed various places. So the short-term effects of the Ukrainian factory strike will be small. And, yes, the Russians will hasten repairs to the degree they are able. But they have done that with refineries too and the Ukrainians simply bide their time, then strike again. Long-term, it seems likely there will be a rocket famine in Mother Russia.

      1. This is unofficial, but it looks like the building targeted involved avionics for the Soyuz 2.1b only. This would explain all the gloating about Rassvet, and why the US doesn’t care. Soyuz/Progress is launched by the Soyuz 2.1a LV, which uses different avionics.

        1. Good, if true. I’m all for maximizing injury to Russia and minimizing injury to the rest of the non-scumbag world. The latter includes, at least for now, no compromise to extant ISS operations.

          That said, it seems inevitable that Ukraine will eventually work its way down its list of Russian industrial sites to hit the Soyuz/Progress works near Moscow and everything else related to Russian rocketry on Russian soil. Right now, my betting would be that that occurs well before the 2030 de-orbiting of ISS. We should be planning to do without Russian launches of any kind to ISS as though they could cease at any moment – because they can.

          2. Of course he’s too chicken to use his nukes. And well he should be. For one thing, he has no real idea of how many of them would actually work or which ones those are. He also knows that we know exactly where he is at every moment and that we are thoroughly capable of guaranteeing that he, personally, would not survive such a move.

            What happens if Russia “falls?” Depends to a considerable degree on what “fall” is taken to mean.

            The least consequential – to Russia – “fall” scenario would be Russia being beaten into submission by Ukraine and being forced to remove its troops from Ukraine. That might, at least in theory, allow Russia to retain its regime and eventually allow it to rest, recuperate and prepare for another run at Ukraine, NATO or both. Russian demographics will preclude this as an option with any real chance of success, but Russia might try anyway. Stupidity and bloody-mindedness are long traditions in Russia. Its leadership are psychopaths and psychopaths tend to regard survival as permission to keep trying.

            The next “fall” scenario up the scale is the same as the first with the additional establishment of a demilitarized, or even de-populated, buffer zone of significant width – 100 km. or more – on current Russian territory bordering Ukraine. This couldn’t plausibly be spun as any sort of “victory” by Russia and would likely spell the end of the regime – or at least of the current leadership. In this scenario, Putin is done in by his fellow psychopaths.

            An additional click of the fall-o-meter brings us to a conclusion that also features an actual public and written surrender by Russia to Ukraine and a period of occupation of key parts of Russia by Ukrainian troops. It would also, ideally, feature Vladimir Putin kneeling in the middle of Red Square while Volodomyr Zelenskyy lops off his head with a cavalry sword, then kicks the head under the treads of a Ukrainian tank which zero-traverses on it and grinds it into a bloody smear on the paving. This would be part of demonstrating, uneqivocally, to the Russians that they have been beaten and had better get used to it. This sort of denouement would also stop-punch any of the sort of “We never actually lost, we were just betrayed” crap that the Germans went for after WW1.

            The preceding scenario would also include complete surrender by Russia of all weapons of mass destruction and all stockpiles of fissionables suitable for bomb-making. It would also include destruction of all delivery systems.

            The penultimate click of the fall-o-meter is the preceding scenario followed by the PRC – if it hasn’t already rattled its ownself to pieces – taking control of Siberia and all of Russia to the Pacific coast. That would reduce Russia to a European rump state with the majority of its former land and a big chunk of its former population now gone.

            NATO and Ukraine – if Ukraine is not already part of NATO by this time – should make no move to intervene. The PRC is doomed anyway and letting it have much of Russia for a few years before it also goes to smash seems only fair – most or all of the land in question having been wrested from China by Russia in centuries past.

            The final click of the fall-o-meter is the preceding scenario followed by the decision of the various Central Asians – probably ringled by the Uzbeks – to get the Golden Horde back together for a final tour to insure that Russia never ever rises again. Thus would begin a long and sanguinary campaign of pillage and rapine not seen in centuries, at the end of which there would not be a single Russian alive anywhere in former Russian demesnes.

            As with notional PRC confiscation of Eastern Russia, the sack of Western Russia and the extermination of its population would be fitting coda to a dark millennium of prior Russian depredations. NATO should, once again, stand by and do nothing to intervene.

            Will the last looter out of Moscow please turn out the lights.

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