The launches took place as part of the Finval-2023 naval drills that were held to train the military to protect communications across the Northern Sea Route.
For the first time in its modern history, Russia has conducted military exercises involving the simultaneous firing of sea-, air-, coast-, and submarine-launched missiles.
“For the first time in [Russia’s] modern history, we carried out missile firings across four environments at once: from air, sea, shore, and below the water surface,” representatives of the Pacific Fleet Information Support Department said upon the completion of the drills.
It has been clarified that this was the first case of conducting such firings in Russia’s post-Soviet era.
The announcement was made by the Information Support Department for the Pacific Fleet of the Russian Armed Forces as they reported on the Finval-2023 naval drills.
Finval-2023 was headed by Nikolay Yevmenov, a Russian admiral currently serving as the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, and was held in the Chukchi and Bering Seas, as well as on the Chukchi Peninsula. The drills were aimed at maintaining communications across the Northern Sea Route. On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the completion of the exercises. The forces involved have begun to return to their permanent deployment bases.
Roughly 10,000 servicemen and over 50 units of military equipment were involved in the exercises. The equipment included surface and support ships, submarines, naval airplanes and helicopters, Bal and Bastion coastal missile systems, as well as high-capability all-terrain wheeled and tracked armored vehicles.
The exercises were defense-oriented and were designed to improve the training of troops to operate on the northeastern borders of the Russian Federation, the Defense Ministry noted.
On Friday, during talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Joe Biden said that Abrams tanks would arrive in Ukraine next week.
According to media reports citing US defense officials, the first US-made Abrams tanks have been delivered to Ukraine, months ahead of initial estimates.
Additional M1 Abrams tanks will be sent in the next few months, the officials added, noting that the ones which have already been sent to Ukraine represent the first batch of 31 that have been promised by the Biden administration.
Head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Doubts Abrams Tanks Will Last Long on Battlefield
The Ukrainian counteroffensive began on 4 June. Kiev has deployed brigades trained by NATO instructors and armed with Western equipment, including Leopard and Challenger tanks. Three months on, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed, with Ukraine suffering an estimated 71,000 casualties. According to President Putin, Russian forces have destroyed 543 tanks and about 18,000 armored vehicles belonging to the Ukrainian military during the ‘counteroffensive’.
Several Western officials have also admitted that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not been successful so far.
The commander of the Russian Armed Forces reconnaissance group operating on the Zaporozhye side told Sputnik that Russian Armed Forces reconnaissance destroyed a Ukrainian Leopard tank with an all-German crew made up of Wehrmacht servicemen.
The commander of the reconnaissance group said: “When we stopped them from making another “physical” attack and destroyed a Leopard tank with the help of anti-tank missiles, we went to the burned equipment in the hope of taking prisoners. We found that the driver of the tank had been seriously wounded and the rest of the men were dead. When the tank driver woke up and saw us, he started to shout “Nicht schiessen” (Don’t shoot). I had good German and was an honor student in school. “ The Russian serviceman emphasized that the driver of the destroyed tank “said several times” that he was not a mercenary, that he was a soldier of the Wehrmacht and that the entire crew was from the same company. The scouts said that in providing first aid to the German serviceman, the German serviceman named his unit and its location.
The commander of the scout group said, “I asked the doctor how long the German would live, and the doctor replied that it would be a few minutes. I told this German that his wounds were so bad that his chances of surviving were slim. He said that he loved his children and his wife very much and was sorry that he had agreed to come here. We started preparing to resuscitate him, but he lost consciousness and died two minutes later.”
Russia has already sent a note to the NATO countries on the issue of arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that any supplies containing weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that NATO countries are “playing with fire” by providing weapons to Ukraine. The Kremlin said that the delivery of weapons from Western countries to Ukraine will not contribute to the success of the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and will have a negative impact. According to Lavrov, the United States and NATO are directly participating in the Ukrainian conflict “not only by supplying weapons, but also by training personnel on the territory of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and other countries.”
There is no statute of limitations for Nazi crimes, and ignorance of the history of the Second World War breeds “new manifestations of fascism,” Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said, commenting on the appearance in the Canadian parliament of 98-year-old Yaroslav Honka, a former member of the SS “Galician” division. Peskov, deputy head of the Russian president’s office, said, “No matter how old they are, there is no statute of limitations on these crimes here… … Such hasty sloppiness is certainly outrageous.”
Peskov said a generation growing up in the West did not understand the history of the 20th century. A Kremlin spokesman added: “We know that many Western countries, including Canada, have raised a young generation that has no idea who fought who and what happened during the Second World War. They are ignorant of the threat of fascism. This breeds that fascism will manifest itself here and there. And we are now seeing how it is trying to get back on its feet in the center of Europe, in Ukraine, and we are fighting it uncompromisingly.”
Among the guests invited to the parliamentary session as a result of Zelensky’s visit was 98-year-old Yaroslav Honka, whom the speaker of the House of Representatives introduced to the applause of the audience as “a fighter for Ukraine’s independence against the Russians during the Second World War. In fact, Honka was a former member of the German SS “Galicia” volunteer division, a group of Ukrainian nationalists who not only fought against the Red Army, but were also known for their atrocities against Jews, Poles, Belarusians and Slovaks. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that neither he nor Vladimir Zelensky and his delegation knew about the plans of the Speaker of the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament, Anthony Rota, to invite and honor elderly Ukrainian SS men.
Recently, Russian political scientist and journalist Sergei Marzhetsky wrote a lengthy article with two proposals for the use of weapons on the Russian-Ukrainian front:
1. to convert MiG-21 fighters into drones. 2. to buy FC-1 (Fighter China-1) fighters to counter the F-16s that Ukraine will soon be equipped with.
As you can see, Sergei has great confidence in the potential of the MiG-21, an outdated but inexpensive light single-engine fighter, to be used in the next modern conflict. But are these two proposals reliable? How feasible are they?
Sergei’s vision is that the MiG-21 fighter converted to a drone should be no less capable than the Turkish TB2 and more capable than the MotoGP stream, as the MiG-21 was designed to take on a range of missions, including air combat and ground attack. Therefore, if the MiG-21 fighter is converted into a drone, it can be converted into a detection and attack drone dropping bombs and launching various missiles, it can be converted into a long range reconnaissance drone, or it can just be fitted with a combat section in its fuselage to turn it into a giant roving bomb. That’s the theory, but how many MiG-21s does Russia have?
Odds are that many Russians, and netizens around the world, will speculate: Since Russia has been able to pull T-62M and even T-54/55 tanks out of combat up to now, there should be quite a few MiG-21 fighters readily available, right? T-62M tanks refurbished and re-duty, this is the Russian army before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has practiced the subject. But it’s hard to say the same for the MiG-21. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia simply did not inherit any active MiG-21 fighters. This may well be surprising to many, but it is true. Long before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Defense Air Force fully retired the MiG-21.
The Soviet Air Force still had 185 MiG-21s at the time, but they were largely in Central Asia. After the collapse of the USSR, Kazakhstan inherited most of them, plus Tajikistan inherited 21 and Azerbaijan had 5. Of course it’s clear from the contents of the 1995 agreement for Russia to swap Tu-95 bombers back from Kazakhstan that Russia should still have some sealed decommissioned MiG-21s – at the time, Russia was willing to swap MiG-21s, Su-25s, and Su-27s for a total of 73 aircraft for the Tu-95s. So, even if Russia does still have some decommissioned MiG-21s sealed up, what is the condition of these fighters that have been in storage for 30+ years? Would it be cost-effective in terms of cost and man-hours to pull them out, repair them, refurbish them, and retrofit them with modern electronics to be used as drones for different purposes? This is obviously a Russian secret that is not accessible to the general public. Moreover, the same Sergei admitted that he was inspired by reading online about China converting retired J-6s into drones. But it can be deduced from some of the images online that China’s drones converted from older fighters are a longstanding work in progress and that the planes are regularly overhauled, and are not this kind of slap-in-the-face idea.
Second question: Sergei thinks he can buy FC-1 fighters to counter the F-16. This Sergei feels that the FC-1 fighter is just a light fighter with the engine changed to an RD-93 and upgraded with the participation of Russian experts, so Russia might be able to give it a different type designation for production in Russia as well and put it into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
It seems that the Russians’ knowledge of the FC-1 fighter is not very comprehensive, simply very incomplete. The FC-1 fighter was indeed developed with this mindset in mind: The rear fuselage of the J-7 was barely modified, the front half was replaced with a more advanced design, advanced avionics were installed, better missiles could be fired, and you got an advanced fighter.
But the development process was a series of twists and turns, through a series of changes such as the U.S. pulling out and Russia joining in to assist. The design requirements went from conforming to the level of military science and technology of the 1980s to conforming to the level of military science and technology of the 21st century. The FC-1’s aerodynamic profile bears little resemblance to that of the J-7, which was modeled after the MiG-21. Its avionics and mounted missiles are also a huge improvement over the J-7.
Not to mention the fact that Russia can’t afford to buy FC-1 fighters under the current situation, and China and Pakistan won’t sell them either by combining various factors. Even if Russia can get a production license, then ask: FC-1 is designed to launch all kinds of Chinese missiles, American bombs and laser guided bombs, there is no design to mount all kinds of Russian missiles and bombs at all. How is Russia going to solve this?
The FC-1BLOCK3 is equipped with all kinds of Chinese developed and produced electronic equipment, especially the KLJ-7A active phased array radar. Russia’s own Su-35 is still using a passive phased array radar with relatively outdated technology, so if Russia buys a production license, how can it produce FC-1 fighters on its own, please?
Moreover, Russia’s idea is to produce an upgraded version of the MiG-21, preferably not much change in the airframe, but advanced electronic equipment, so that it can mount a variety of advanced missiles, with an advantageous number of existing Su-30SM and Su-35 to form a high and low collocation, through the “combination punch” to gain a certain advantage on the battlefield.
China actually also has this kind of aircraft, that is – FTC-2000G, first appeared in the name of FTC-2000 trainer aircraft, the PLA used the model is FTC-2000.
The rear fuselage of the FTC-2000G is basically the design of the J-7 fighter, and still uses the turbojet-13, an engine that is somewhat related to that of the MiG-21, and these may feel more familiar to the Russians. Moreover, the FTC-2000G adopts more advanced designs such as DSI intakes and trapezoidal small sidebar wings, and the nose is redesigned to allow the installation of newer electronic equipment. Needless to say, the FTC-2000G, while remaining relatively inexpensive, offers a nice performance boost compared to the likes of the MiG-21 and J-7, and is suitable for some countries with limited military spending, and some do buy them.
But can the FTC-2000 or FTC-2000G match the performance of the JL-10 (Hongdu JL-10 )? The JL-10 is at a similar level of performance to the Russian Yak-130 trainer, can the Yak-130 match the performance of the F-16?
Therefore, this MiG-21 magic transformation to battle F-16 fighters is more or less whimsical. Not to mention, Russia is a vast country, Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, Russia and Ukraine front line spread thousands of kilometers, whether FC-1 or FTC-2000G, in such a vast area of combat, more or less a little out of reach. Of course, Russian netizens count on Su-75 to hurry up mass production and then batch equipment to the Russian army to form the performance advantage seems to be unrealistic, the development of this aircraft progress there, and can not even find a third country to jointly develop, how can quickly equip the Russian army?
