Ukraine says it downed Russian hypersonic missiles during 'exceptional' air attack on Kyiv
apnews.com
Ukrainian officials say air defenses thwarted an intense Russian air attack on Kyiv and shot down all missiles aimed at the capital with the help of Western-supplied weapons. The assault early Tuesday came as European leaders sought new ways to punish Russia for the war and a Chinese envoy sought traction for Beijing’s peace proposal. Loud explosions boomed over Kyiv as the nighttime attack combined Russian missiles launched from the air, sea and land. A Ukrainian official said Russia’s latest attack on Kyiv was “exceptional in its density." An air force spokesperson says the bombardment across Ukraine included six Russian Kinzhal aero-ballistic hypersonic missiles, the most fired in a single attack in the war.

Anyone got any more insight into this? Hypersonics are supposed to be a significant advantage for both Russia and China. If the West has a counter for these, that seems real bad.

  • freagle@lemmygrad.mlOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m always trying to look for evidence against my own beliefs to try to get a more accurate picture of the world. It seems unlikely that there would have been a doctrinal shift under Obama to counter near-peer rivals without an attendant increase in weapons production. That would be sort of obviously silly. The noise about lack of production capacity in the West, I fear, is disinformation. No one in the West is thinking about countering China, with its massive quantity advantage in manufacturing and in labor power and just sitting around not thinking about production capacity.

    • darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      Considering whose pockets they’re reaching into for more weapons the idea it’s a psyop seems far-fetched. Going to occupied Korea and making a big show of your supposedly super strong, world-mastering military alliance (NATO) running out of weapons and scrounging around for them doesn’t look particularly good for the west. Oh sure it doesn’t matter in the propaganda centers of Europe and the US but Africa and Asia look at this and think “they wouldn’t be able to win a war against Russia/China” which is bad for NATO and the US efforts of hegemony because those countries and peoples look then to China/Russia.

      The fact is these production capacities are also as far as I know known factors. They didn’t suddenly dramatically lower them when Ukraine started to psyop Russia.

      And China isn’t going to be fooled or impacted by the west having more weapons than supposed. Their production capacity and proximity to any conflict in the Taiwan straits means they will simply win. There is no way for NATO to win there and extra production capacity also doesn’t change the calculus that currently the NATO combined navies are enough to throw up a wider area (not close to China but further out in the Pacific) net and blockade around China on the seas which they couldn’t immediately break through.

      I just don’t think the west is meaningfully misrepresenting the production issues but maybe I’m wrong.

      And IMO it’s not a matter of the imperialists looking at production capacity or not, it’s a matter of there being certain realities. Constraints such as bad and no central planning, greedy defense contractors who want to maximize profit being reluctant to invest in massive new production capacity and lines without guaranteed, inked, in the public domain laws and budgets to guarantee those lines are funded far into the future and they don’t take on any risk from doing so.

      I just don’t think the west is capable because of things like that of being that misleading about production capacity. Maybe they have some stockpiles they’ve “lost” in inventorying conveniently over the decades but stockpiles wouldn’t be enough in a war against China who would have active, massive production capacity.