Ukraine

This is a follow-up to that Twitter thread I posted previously about the airplanes in Russia:

“But there’s a big problem in that most of the planes the Russian airlines fly are leased from Western companies, and the aircraft owners now fear they’ll never get their planes back.”

“They’re operating mostly Western-made airplanes, Airbus or Boeing,” said Yi Gao, professor in the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology at Purdue University. “So the current sanctions on Russia will have a huge impact on their operators.”

"According to Cirium’s data, of the 861 passengers and cargo aircraft currently in service in Russia, 332 of them were manufactured by Boeing, and 304 were made by Airbus. Dozens of the rest are from Bombardier and other western manufacturers, while only 136 are Russian-made Sukhoi planes (Sukhoi merged with MiG last year to create a joint airplane manufacturing venture called UAC).

Boeing, Airbus and other western companies that manufacture planes and aircraft components, such as engine makers GE and Pratt and Whitney, have suspended supplying spare parts and no longer provide maintenance and technical support services, and that could soon make it difficult for Russian airlines to keep their airplanes flying."

If this really goes on a long time and becomes a thing, I wonder if they can start taking apart some planes and using their parts to keep other planes going. Could it end up being like cars in Cuba?

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Bearing in mind I’m not a large aircraft mechanic - In theory, maybe, but it’s a titanic maybe. In practice, almost definitely not. There’s a world of difference between a 50s chevy where you’re re-casting your own rotors and rebuilding your own small-block, and a Jet engine. AND, not to mention, I’m not sure they have the capability to build their own parts at scale, nor will they be able to import them, and they’ll be cut off from most maintenance resources, even things as simple as documentation.

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I watched a video where a pilot was pointing out that it could quickly become a problem for the long-term certification of those planes. If scheduled maintenance and parts cannot be provided on schedule, and especially if communication & record keeping are disrupted, then the equipment (air frames & engines) will quickly fall out of international air worthiness status and rectifying that is practically impossible if there is any doubt about what parts have been used and whether maintenance checks have been done on schedule.

At this point, all the Russian airlines are flying pretty much exclusively within Russia, because if they fly to another country, the plane will be repossessed by the company that owns it, so while you raise an excellent point, I don’t know if it matters internally in Russia.

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I hear some Ukrainian tractors are looking to repo them :-p

It will matter when a Russian domestic flight goes down.

From a practical standpoint, sure, but internally, I doubt Russia is going to ground their domestic flights because of a lack of certification.

Yeah, lack of certification won’t stop them. But if the planes are truly very unsafe to fly, they’ll definitely have fewer flights that cost more money.

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All true points, but I was referring to some hopeful future where Russian companies are able to resume international relationships to some degree. Many (most?) countries won’t permit a uncertified passenger aircraft to land at their airports and won’t permit that airline to operate as a commercial carrier without certified aircraft. So, it is going to make things more difficult when this fucked up time is, hopefully, behind us.

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Lotsa news today.

I can only imagine the lack of NATO intervention is down to the fact that it possible that NATO intervention can ‘provoke’ Putin into using nukes.

With no viable countermeasure, can a bluff be called?

I have no idea. The stakes are extremely high.

The other position I’ve seen is that by NATO/USA not directly engaging their own military forces in Ukraine it doesn’t give the countries who are only tenuously supporting the economic sanctions against Russia (or at least not overtly flouting them) any valid excuse to switch their positions to be more supportive of Russia. Also, if NATO acts directly militarily then Putin will be able to say “see! I told you NATO was a threat and just bidding their time to attack us!”.

Now, both of these (especially #2) are dumb logically, but similar to the value gained in the US revealing the intelligence before the invasion describing what Russia was planning, so much of global politics is pretext and fig-leaf excuses (or lack thereof).

Putin could just go ahead and say that NATO got involved, even if they didn’t. At least to his own people through his own media. He would just lie and say that NATO forces are disguising themselves as the Ukrainian military or as Ukranian civilian resistance. So if he wanted to make that excuse, I think he would have made it already.

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The problem is that with all the misinformation that has been spread, there’s enough people who can be easily convinced that NATO is actually in the wrong. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation that’s been engineered by Russia.

Apart from the sanctions, the information warfare if probably what will lead any escalating military actions from NATO. Otherwise Russia will as it as has done, spin it, so that the world is evil and Russia good.

How many people have said “well if NATO didn’t do X…”? All the while ignoring the fact that Russia is genociding to get their way.

It’s insane, but pandemic and climate change included. Getting the wider public to understand the facts and to support taking the necessary action, has been a bigger problem than the problem.

True, but with climate change there’s a problem that is closer to the root than the fact that people can be made to believe it’s a lie. The root being that there are powerful people with a vested interest in the problem not being solved. There’s an apocalyptic existential crisis, and there are people out there, powerful people, who are ok with, or even prefer, humanity’s failure. Imagine how things would be if all the powerful evil people wanted climate change fixed, as badly as we do.

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“I don’t do any checks,” said Andriy, a Ukrainian Air Force pilot who as a condition of granting an interview was not permitted to give his surname or rank. “I just take off.”

Nearly a month into the fighting, one of the biggest surprises of the war in Ukraine is Russia’s failure to defeat the Ukrainian Air Force. Military analysts had expected Russian forces to quickly destroy or paralyze Ukraine’s air defenses and military aircraft, yet neither have happened. Instead, Top Gun-style aerial dogfights, rare in modern warfare, are now raging above the country.

It’s like something from a movie, isn’t it? That Ukraine’s air force is still standing is probably the most surprising thing to me of this whole war.

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This is a wildly deep analysis from the last place I expected to see it. Guess gaming youtuber x has an interesting day job.

He did a more recent one on the “cannon fodder” myth which I haven’t been able to check out myself to make sure it’s well sourced enough to post here, but this one definitely is.

If ya like breakdowns of military spending and objectives since 2014, this is for you.

edit: It’s well sourced, here it is.

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