Russian reports on the War, paint different picture

[dr. blackclove]

While I'm a big proponent of reading news from non-US sources, I have to say this Russian report sounds pretty unbelievable.

I haven't seen distortion of facts on American news. They don't lie about what they see. They *do* report things that the gov't says without any criticism or suspicion. My favorites are like, "Unconfirmed intelligence reports suggest that Saddam may have had a plan in place to use poison gas against kittens in the event that coalition forces fire on Iraqi aircraft." In other words, your basic rumormongering. If there's no evidence except that some guy in the CIA does a bad DeNiro impression ("I heard things!") - DON'T REPORT IT!!!

After all, the CIA would never ever make a mistake or lie to us .

[dr. blackclove]

Also, if we want Russian news, shouldn't we go read STRANA or VESTI or one of the other real news agencies? I've never heard of this aeronautics site. On CSPAN they're pushing NTV as the "Russian news source" -- also rather bizarre, nobody really watches NTV anymore, do they??

[Jaakko]

Doc, the actual site is www.irakwar.ru, the aeronautics site only translates it to English.

I've no idea what's up with the irakwar site.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
It is amazing what sources the left wing terms as being biased. It used to be conservatives who would bash the media, now it seems to be the left and those who are anti-US. But the left has gone to unimaginable lengths in attacking the media. Going beyong attacking Fox News, they have painted CNN as just as bad. But now they are actually attacking the BBC as well, well known for not having bias. I wonder what is next, will they start attacking The Guardian as too left-wing?

ad hominem

[dr. blackclove]

CNN isn't "just as bad" as Fox News, but there is some bias there. I mean, shouldn't the news be at least a little bit skeptical of what "government sources" say? They always have analysts who are busy treating those government sources as fact and speculating about what they mean.

Take the whole "Russian company sells weapons to Iraq" thing. I have NO CLUE what the evidence is for this other than that "government sources" say so. Yet it's often treated as a fact. Russia in fact denies it and their company went on TV there saying "dude, we're not stupid to sell weapons to Iraq... don't be crazy" for two hours. And we've now conveniently bombed "all six" of the sites with those jamming systems, meaning there's no way to prove the allegation.

It kind of reminds me of the whole forged documents incident "proving" Iraq was buying uranium thing. It was also treated as fact at that time with nobody going, "Oh come on, what nonsense". Then it turned out the documents were "obvious forgeries". Oops!

[Sava]

IMO, instead of having a raving conservative POV, CNN has a raving leftist POV. They're biased, but they balance their extremism... unlike Fox.

[Ned]

MtG as a point about the embedded reporters. They are not with every unit. Further, there are large gaps in time between reports. This seems to indicate is that there is a pattern of enbedding intended to deceive the Iraqis. For example, the reporter with the 7th Cav. clearly is telling the world that the 7th Cav. is approaching Karbala. But the reporter also indicates that they were stalled before Karbala for 30 hours. However, the 3rd infantry, which was trailing the 7th Cav., continued to move. Even so, there is no indication that the 3rd infantry contacted the 7th Cav.. What does this mean? It seems indicate that the 3rd infantry may actually be flanking or bypassing Karbala where the the Medina division of the were Republican Guard is dug in.

Onto the Russian news. It seems to me that the Russians are reporting as fact information they been given by the Saddam Government. They maybe also reporting as fact information given to them by al Jazeera. The Saddam Government, of course, is very much interested in creating the illusion of an effective resistance. They perhaps do so by adding a lot of pro-Iraqi fiction to events. Al Jazeera, on the other hand, reports only pro-Iraqi or anti-American news.

It appears that both the US and Russian medias are reporting government releases without questioning the truth of those releases. The US government seems to be trying to deceive the Iraqis by releasing "incomplete" information. The Iraqis, however, appear to be guilty of wholesale fabrication and embellishments.

Al Jazeera is so blatantly biased against United States that is hard to believe anybody can believe anything they say.

[dr. blackclove]

I wouldn't imagine sane people take Iraqi "information" seriously. When Saddam says "we didn't lose the 1991 Gulf War" I think we'd all agree there is a bit of a reality gap there

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by LaRusso
okay here is the deal about the russian site
1) my guess is that they are relying on their liman spy ship, whatever it may do. it was in adriatics during kosovo war
2) during kosovo war a similar type of site provided very accurate information regarding the war

The Russians were a lot closer, and had much better contacts on the ground. US coverage of that conflict was abysmal.

3) news on this site appear usually 12 -24 hrs earlier than they appear on western media. they reported clash in nassiriya the minute it was reported it was taken with no resistance on skynews, etc

Early news from any source is always wrong, barring a miracle.

4) a lad there did a piece a couple of days ago on interception capabilities. perhaps gru can pull it out

I'd be really interested in what the Russians think they can do with respect to our short range encrypted lateral and tactical comms. It might be possible that a deception campaign is in place using plaintext or poorly encrypted comms. Operational deception is a big part of US doctrine.

5) i am really surprised that so many american posters actually believe that pentagon would not lie to them. every military lies in every war and americans are no exception

It's not whether they "lie," it's the style of lie. The US has a peculiar relationship between senior officers, the press and politicians. The Senate has to approve all officer promotions to O6 and above. As the Bob Stumpff situation showed, the Senate Armed Services Committee is a bunch of gutless bastards, so they won't touch the promotion of anyone vaguely controversial with the press, lest it become an unwelcome reelection issue. So the form of lying becomes more subtle, and it's more based on omitting things, or not telling all the truth, rather than making stuff up entirely.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by LaRusso
oh and one more bit
our main daily paper correspondent who is with US/UK army and who is real fan of the American military (dunno why), reported that 4 Abrams were destroyed yesterday in the south and that the penetrations were at the front sides of the vehicles. He said it was surprising and showed that Iraqis imported new weapons. In that light the loss of couple of more BMPs and tanks in the north looks kinda believable.
But then of course, one can believe that even tanks start burning because of the 'mechanical failures' like helicopters...

There isn't an AT penetrator in the world that can take the frontal armor of an Abrams at any but extremely close range. At best, what might have happened is that the DU outer layer over the Chobham armor was compromised, and gun optics were damaged from shock/vibration.

If the DU layer is penetrated, IIRC the standard procedure is to recover the vehicle and go through a decon and cleanup procedure. Most likely, what would be done would be to swap out the turret at a division level maintenance facility.

That's still granting a lot to the Iraqis, and whoever they would have bought from.

I could imagine, though, that the Russians would salivate even over being able to claim to have an AT munition to sell half the third world that would be able to take on an Abrams. Who was the sponsor of that article?

[Fidel]

again, i can provide the link but the text is in serbian. he is our most experienced war correspondent (and a real bastard, i really really do not like him). he is generally rather pro-american and often makes documentaries about west point, anneheim and the like. he is sponsored by one of the biggest tv stations here to report from iraq.
currently he is based in kuwait and travels often to southern portions of the front. he repeated the claim in two subsequent live reports from kuwait...'abrams were penetrated in front by some AT weapon' and that 'that has caused a great concern among the allies'
meanwhile, i listened to all tv channels here and one of the big things was putin-bush spat over GPS jammers and AT weapons. mind you, serbs are 99% against this war but the officials and the media are very very cautious and, if i may say, at least on the surface neutral, if not pro-american.


as for american news, here's the example. big battle reported at najaf. 150, 300, 500, who knows how many iraqis killed. biggest battle so far. no data on american casualties reported, but some vehicles may be damaged. too hard to count your own ranks, but enough time to count dead iraqis in a sandstorm. go figure...

[Fidel]

okay, here's the piece someone wrote on interception. me, i do not have a clue, i am just a lawyer, so the only thing i can assure you of is that this is a war of agression and in violation of many principles of international law i expect mtg to say that all of this is BS....anyway as i promised...

How military radio communications are intercepted?
21.03.2003 [17:57]


The US military is using SINCGARS (Single Channel Ground And Airborne Radio System) frequency-hopping radios in the field. These radio sets are categorized as Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) transceivers. The FHSS method is not new: it originated from the Second World War and, simply stated, it employs a narrow band carrier, shifting frequency in a pattern known only to the transmitter and the receiver. The frequency can be changed several hundred times per second.

The FHSS military radios are synchronized daily to use the same frequency modulation algorithm. The synchronization process occurs either through a direct physical connection of the radio sets to each other or to a special device known as the programmer. Some radios can also synchronize frequency modulation algorithms via an encrypted transmission of the frequency modulation algorithm in a non-frequency-hopping mode, although this method is generally considered to be less secure.

The military radios in the US armed forces commonly use encryption and the frequency hopping methods provide an additional layer of security during transmission of the encrypted signal. An example of a frequency-hopping field VHF/FM transceiver used by US Special Forces would be the Caracal RPM 4740 manufactured by Thales Communications of France.

The Caracal covers the 30 to 87.975 MHz frequency range. It also has 10 programmable simplex or half-duplex channels out of its repertoire of 2,320. Hopping in narrowband (6.4 MHz) and wideband (30 to 87.975 MHz) orthogonal modes, Caracal contains high-grade internal digital encryption and has an output of 1 W. Insertion of frequency and security codes is accomplished using the MA 4073B programmer or MA 4083B fill gun. A reset switch on each radio is used to erase codes rapidly. The synchronization function is broadcast, requiring about 6 seconds. Other features include receive-only selective calling, frequency barring and `hailing' by fixed-frequency radios when in the hopping mode.

However, security afforded by frequency-hopping methods is very dependant on the strict adherence to protocols for operating such radios. The US troops and other operators of frequency-hopping radio sets frequently disregard these protocols. An example would be an artillery unit passing digital traffic in the frequency-hopping mode, which would enable an unauthorized listener to determine the frequency-hopping algorithm and eavesdrop on the transmission.

Even when proper protocols for using frequency-hopping radios are being adhered to interception and decryption of these signals is still possible. The frequency-hopping interceptors are special advanced reconnaissance wideband receivers capable of simultaneously tracking a large number of frequency-hopping encrypted transmissions even in high background noise environments. An example of such a reconnaissance device would be the FH-1 frequency-hopping interceptor manufactured by VIDEOTON-MECHLABOR Manufacturing and Development Ltd of Hungary. The FH-1 frequency-hopping interceptor is a modern reconnaissance system based on parallel signal processing technology.

The equipment has 160 independent receiving channels covering a 4 MHz wide IF band with 25 kHz channel spacing, 60 dB channel selection and 60 dB intermodulation suppression. The 4 MHz wide IF band is the IF output of a special high-speed front-end receiver which has a 20 to 1,000 MHz frequency range. The digitized output signals of the channels are multiplexed and fed as 1 Mbits/s data to a fast dedicated signal-processing computer. As the processing time of the 160 channels is 200 µs with the front-end receiver 4 MHz frequency setting time, the processing speed of this interceptor is 4 MHz/200 µs or 20 GHz/s. This high speed makes it possible to process the complete 30 to 80 MHz ground-to-ground VHF band within a 2.5 ms time slot.

The system's processing algorithm filters out noise spikes and stationary transmissions and in this way hopping transmissions can be classified either in the traditional frequency versus amplitude mode or in a waterfall-like frequency versus time display mode. Optional software modules are available for direction-finding the FH transmission and for controlling a remote follower/jammer.

[TheStinger]

The russians wnat it to seem that their equipment is doing well so they are exagerrtaing all their claims. thry don't like it when they see all there T-72's blown up

[Fidel]

t-72 is an old generation tank

[The Mad Monk]

Try telling that to Serb...

According to this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-03-25-war-zone_x.htm

Three Abrams tanks were lost in Basra. One became stuck in a ditch and had to be abandoned when the bridge it was crossing collapsed; two others were struck in the rear armor and set ablaze. The crews escaped in all three cases.