I take a somewhat more measured tone on that. First, there's no demonstration (or likely capability) for it to target a moving target such as a carrier (though I believe the Chinese have been working on a non-ballistic hypersonic anti-carrier weapon). That would require updated guidance for each MIRV and I doubt it can do that.
Second, there's a real ability to defend against such penetrators using directed energy weapons, but we don't have those deployed (at least at scale) yet. THAAD might have some capability but I think realistically it would be limited with even 7-10 reentry vehicles, and it also is a money-losing game to deploy that against such conventional weapons.
Notice the Ukrainians have severely limited photography of the damage it caused at that plant. It's a big problem for Ukraine, if the Russians do wind up 'mass producing' them in significant quantities, even without tactical nuke warheads.
An interesting theory:
Quote:
Let us recall that in "retaliation" for the Ukrainian missile raids on November 19th and 20th, on the 21st a Russian "Oreshnik" IRBM plowed dozens of kinetic penetrator submunitions into the Yuzhmash industrial plant in Dnipropetrovsk at something like Mach 14. Muted secondary explosions could be seen on videos of the strike shortly after the impact. Yuzhmash is known to have a deep bunker complex underneath it dating from the Soviet Union, presumably to allow some level of industrial production to continue even following an all-out nuclear exchange.
Let us also recall that the Russians have located and destroyed Storm Shadow stockpiles in Ukraine on multiple previous occasions, despite what are presumably heroic operational security measures by the AFU. I'll just put it this way - the SVR and GRU are very, very good at their jobs. As such it would make a great deal of sense for the Ukrainians to store their long-range missile stockpile in a facility which, even if the Russians could sniff out the missiles there, they would have great difficulty targeting. A facility like, say, the doomsday bunker under Yuzhmash.
…
What if last Friday's Oreshnik strike wasn't actually aimed at deterring anyone but was instead a disarming attack that destroyed the latest - and possibly last - shipment of Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles in a hardened warehouse underneath Yuzhmash? This would explain both a lack of follow-up Storm Shadow attacks and new trial balloons floated in its aftermath by the same bad actors about transferring JASSM cruise missiles to Ukraine. I've even heard from a flight monitoring contact that covert transfers of Taurus missiles from Germany may be underway - something that would be totally unnecessary if the Ukrainians still had 100+ Storm Shadows on hand.
As I've said many times, the winning move for the Russians here is to continue to play the existing game rather than start a new one by widening the war. Under the rules of that game, anything in Ukraine can be targeted - and if these fancy British missiles cook off in their storage bunkers then there's really no need to deter anyone from using them.
This is, by the way, far more consistent with the normal logic of war than some kind of tit-for-tat retaliation scheme. You use everything you can, all the time, to inflict maximum damage upon the enemy so as to defeat them. That's well beyond mere deterrence.
Sitrep: Simplicius agrees with the nukes-to Kiev skeptics, funny enough. And the one ATACMS that did make it past the pantsirs etc. to hit an S-400 that was undergoing maintenance:
Quote:
You see, even Ukrainian sources admit they could only hit the S-400 because it was literally defunct and not in operation, "undergoing maintenance". This is attested by the fact that the one source even claims that Almaz Antey employees were killedlikely mechanics from the S-400's manufacturer.
So, is Ukraine creating more "PR" hits with the usual method, carefully picking and choosing low hanging fruit targets which can be used for big media play? They only have a limited amount of missiles so it makes sense that their strategy revolves around "picking off the slow and feeble" to pretend at 'success'.
All part of the Ukraine proxy info war:
Quote:
The last thing to mention is that Ukraine continues to waste its precious few 'strategic' systems on Kursk, which has no effect on the frontline. There is no real argument to be made for how hitting targets in Kursk region can help Ukraine. Even the airfields around Kursk host mostly frontline tactical craft that only engage areas like the Kursk incursion, which is completely ancillary to the real war in the Donbass.
It proves that Ukraine as per usual has no intention of actually hurting the Russian military, but rather creating an info weapon against the Russian populace to turn society against the leadership.
Some have argued Ukraine is "attriting" air defense systems so that they can then lob longer missiles at strategic enterprises like Russian defense industries. Does hitting non-operational, defunct S-400s contribute to this? It's all a smokescreen.
Anyway, forever war!
