Since the start of the aggression against Ukraine, the Russian armies had already changed strategy three times for the overall conduct of operations. First, during the first ten days of the operation, they employed a strategy of decapitation of the political authorities and the Ukrainian government, notably by carrying out a major airborne operation on the airfield of Hostomel in the north of Kyiv. After the failure of this maneuver, Moscow began a strategy aimed at the collapse of the Ukrainian forces, by simultaneously and intensively conducting offensives on all the fronts, to the north in Kyiv and Kharkov, to the east in the Donbass, and south from…
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Does the United States want to prevent Ukraine from going on the offensive?
Article updated at 22:00 following the announcement by the United States of sending 30 to 50 M1A2 Abrams to Ukraine. In recent weeks, the issue of sending Western heavy tanks to Ukraine has become a central topic, both for the press and for many Western political figures. Under the impulse of the Polish authorities, it seems that the whole of this problem would come down to the only German position, which refused to send German Leopard 2 heavy tanks or acquired from Germany, to Kyiv. However, and as we already mentioned last week, the German position was in no way different from this…
Read the articleHow does the new Russian industrial strategy redefine the strategic equation of the conflict in Ukraine?
Since the beginning of the military aggression against Ukraine, the Russian armies have suffered very heavy losses, particularly in terms of armour. It is thus more than 1600 Russian heavy tanks, but also almost 3500 heavy armored vehicles and 300 mobile artillery systems which have been destroyed, damaged or captured by the Ukrainians in a documented way, that is to say between 20 and 60% of its stocks of before the war, according to the categories of equipment. Ukrainian losses, meanwhile, are also significant, but to a lesser extent, with 450 tanks, less than 900 heavy armored vehicles and around a hundred documented mobile artillery systems, but these losses represent…
Read the articleThe War in Ukraine disrupted Russian military programming
Since 2012, the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin and the arrival of Sergei Shoigu at the Ministry of Defence, Russian military programming, organized through multi-annual programs called GPV, has been at the heart of the effort to rebuild the armies of Moscow. The last GPV, started in 2017, was to allow the Russian armies to consolidate their digital and technological ascendancy over their potential adversaries, with an annual budget of 2.000 billion rubles, i.e. €30 billion devoted each year to the acquisition of new equipment and modernization of equipment in service. So just over a year ago, when the…
Read the articleThe US Army will test the Iron Dome to protect its vulnerable infrastructure
One of the major lessons of the war that pitted Azeri forces against Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 was the great vulnerability of force support sites, such as logistics areas, command posts, and fortifications, in the face of modern artillery systems coupled with reconnaissance drones. And if the Armenian anti-aircraft defenses managed to keep the Azeri fighters at a distance, they were largely idle in the face of the small reconnaissance drones directing the enemy artillery fire. Beyond this example, the increase in range and accuracy of modern and future artillery systems, whether artillery…
Read the articleIs the island of Taiwan going to have to turn into a fortress?
During the Second World War, the island of Malta, under British mandate, was transformed into a defensive fortress which allowed Great Britain to hinder the ambitions of the axis in North Africa, playing a preponderant role in the final collapse of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, running out of raw materials, especially fuel. The island was so reinforced that the Herkules invasion operation, scheduled for November 1942, and which was to mobilize more than 60.000 men, 1600 vehicles and nearly 600 combat aircraft, was canceled in the face of some 26.000 defenders of the island, to a dozen tanks, and to 60 to 80 Spitfires and…
Read the articleNew tension between China and India in the Himalayas
The situation has once again become tense between Chinese and Indian forces in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, at the level of the demarcation zone which is the de facto border between the two countries. According to a statement issued by the Indian Ministry of Defense, Chinese forces would have started, on the night of August 19 to 30, 2020, unilaterally a movement of forces along the southern shore of Pangong Tso Lake, breaking the status- quo put in place following clashes between the military of the two countries last May. The Indian armed forces immediately also took position to reinforce…
Read the articleThe Pentagon uses TRISO technology to design its mini nuclear reactors
In mid-March 2020, the Pentagon announced that it had entrusted 3 American companies with the studies for the design of a miniaturized nuclear reactor intended to be projected and, potentially, to supply electrical energy to the remote bases of the American armed forces. The fears of seeing a nuclear reactor set up within an American base, and on foreign soil, have obviously raised objections and questions, in particular concerning the security of the device in the face of an attack. The examples of the disasters of Three Miles Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, naturally raise fears that a runaway scenario of the reactor which would enter into uncontrolled meltdown and end up melting its containment...
Read the articlePentagon begins study of portable and projectable mini nuclear reactors
The Pentagon announced this Monday, March 9, the awarding of 3 contracts to 3 American companies for the preliminary study of a transportable and projectable miniaturized nuclear reactor with an electrical power of 1 to 5 MW, intended to autonomously supply a projected American base without resorting to local electricity production. $13,5 million was thus allocated to BWX Technologies, Inc in Virginia, $11,9 million to Westinghouse Government Services in Washington DC and $14,3 million to X-energy in the State of Maryland, i.e. a total of $39,7 million for this program known as "Project Pele". Companies will have two years to study…
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