Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "RFU News — Reporting from Ukraine" channel.

 @Muljinn Why no flyover for May Day?
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@KirkFickert I agree on the Hornet for dealing with Soviet-era runways, which are big tiles with gaps that allow for the thermal expansion and contraction throughout the year. Hornet landing gear is very robust. F-16 main landing gear are pretty tough, but the nose landing gear is not. F-16 does better in BVR due to kinematics, but its Radar is small. Hornet with APG-79 would be a game-changer for Ukraine, and the USN and USMC Hornets were plumbed for SEAD with the HARM dating back to the 1980s. Hornet with APG-79, ATFLIR, JDAM, and AIM-120C7 would put a hurt on Russian air, but would also be targeted by S-300, Su-35S, and MiG-31BM + R-37M.
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@llothar68 I’ve been trying to tell people what a paper tiger Russia is for many years. It’s a very primitive, poor country spanning 10 times zones in the frozen tundra and forests in the northern hemisphere, isolated from the oceans. Very backwards and totally different thinking than most other countries I’ve been to.
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@Jacob B Russian bot self-identified. You guys have really deteriorated over the years.
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 @herrakaarme The Chinese weapons might be worse, packaged to look nice, but inside is trash.
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@herrakaarme Cheap Chinese labor peaked in 2015. It's 1.5x the cost of labor in Mexico now. One Child policy murdered babies for 35 years, so now labor is in high demand, limited supply. The Chinese are also thieves at all levels of their own system, so components are missing from their own critical defense systems. Imagine being a FMS customer receiving military hardware with things missing. As their economy tanks, this will be more and more of a problem.
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@BosonCollider Sweden doesn't have enough Gripens for itself as it is.
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@supertuscans9512 Yup. F-16 has one of the lowest MMHPFH, with the F-35A being the lowest in history. F-16 is anywhere from 11-22hrs, depending on variant, airframe age, crew experience, and available spares.
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@llothar68 Russian VVS has lost scores of fighters over or near Ukraine, including at least 21 new Su-34 Fullback strike fighters, 3 Su-35S, 11 Su-30SM, 10 Su-24M/MR, 30 Su-25, and 1 MiG-31BM. That's a brutal loss of expensive, modernized fighters.
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@hb1338 F-16 would struggle against Su-35S and MiG-31BM in BVR due to detection range. Block 52 F-16C/D with AWACS and GCI support did well against Indian Air Force Su-30MKI and MiG-21 Bison (with Israeli ECM and avionics, newer missiles), but the Irbis-E PESA Radar in the Su-35S combined with R-37 Long Range BVRAAM would be very difficult for the F-16. You would need the new USAF PoBIT AESA-equipped F-16CM or UAE F-16E/F Block 60 to have a chance, neither of which are happening. UAE F-16E/F were $200 million each, custom-built for the Emirates.
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@fyrchmyrddin1937 Russia and Mexico are more currpt than Ukraine. Ukrainian corruption is driven by Russia, especially under the Yanukovych puppet regime with Zlochevsky running Burisma and all the Donbas cabinet members Yanukovych placed in Kiev. Russia has a historic imperative to put their boot on Ukraine's neck, so that's where the corruptsia culture comes from.
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@nvelsen1975 Oryx takes photos and videos from all sources, including from within Russia and Belorussia. Civilians record all kinds of shoot-downs in Crimea, Murmansk, Minsk, Luhansk, etc.
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@llothar68 Thousands of vehicles have been lost. For 1x Su-35S, you could buy 85x T-72 tanks.
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@nvelsen1975 Language barrier doesn't matter because we can visually ID specific aircraft and vehicles, as well as bort numbers.
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@woodstream6137 Yup. The F-16 doesn't like being put down on the runway. You can purposely shoot a short approach and as you flare, still end up touching down halfway down the runway. That's with External Fuel Tanks and normal combat stores.
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@nvelsen1975 I've been studying Soviet order of battle since the 1970s. Recognition skills were bread and butter for me in most of the units I was in, while the Army has atrophied that skill set due to GWOT, multi-generational institutional laziness, and overreliance on technology, assuming someone else will do the work for them. Russians are still able to upload video online, which lately have included the MiG-31BM crash up in the Murmansk military district, as well as crashes, shoot-downs, impacts, and weapons effects in Crimea and along the border. We also have seen their own security camera footage of the accidental bombing of Belgorod, the crash of a Flanker into an apartment building, the drone strikes on strategic bomber airfields, sabotage, and many other relevant incidents.
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@nvelsen1975 SIGINT and ELINT plus linguists solves that pretty well, not that Pashto is a strategically-significant language to the US. We’ve had an extensive Russian language program since the beginnings of the Cold War. We went to DLI for it and German. You said Russian internet is shut off to the West, and yet there are uploads daily from Russia.
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@nvelsen1975 Afghanistan was a strategic trap, a distraction to buy time for China to modernize its military using the technology they were handed by the Bush41 and Clinton White Houses in the 1990s. Clinton and Biden are serial rapists, not Trump. Biden has been on Soviet payroll since 1972. They literally financed his campaign into the Senate in Delaware.
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