Thoughts and Comments on Current Russian,Ukrainian Conflict/War

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It seems to me that it would be difficult, almost impossible, for a bomb on the highway bridge to catch, not one, but several railcars on fire simultaneously. Added to that, why did the engineer stop? Was there a derailment? Wouldn't the SOP for such an emergency be to get the heck off the bridge, if at all possible, to avoid further damage?

So many questions .
 
Was there a derailment? Wouldn't the SOP for such an emergency be to get the heck off the bridge, if at all possible, to avoid further damage?
That's just it, you don't know what's happening to the track under the burning cars; and you don't know if they have enough structural integrity to transmit the drawbar pull of the locomotives shortly ahead of them to the remainder of the train.
And with air brakes, if the car-to-car brake hoses were severed then all the cars went in to an emergency brake application and you aren't going to crawl in to the flames to replace the air brake hoses so you can pump the brakes off to move the train.

That was quite a blast, the tank cars could easily have been punctured by shrapnel. Also could have had burning material from the bomb itself strike them.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it wasn't a truck bomb. The main reason is that the truck doesn't appear to be in the right spot when the explosion hits in the Guardian video above.
Been likewise thinking that. And I wonder how much 'zoom lens distance compression', or whatever the proper technical term for it is, is in the CCTV image.
 
It most likely was a truck bomb. Ignore the seeming start of the explosion in the video, the shockwave can easily cause issues with storing digital data. If you compare the location of the truck on the right at the time of the explosion with the collapsed bridge span, they match up incredibly closely. The bomb explosion was powerful enough that some shrapnel probably hit and set off the fuel cars on the train, to which the locomotive driver disconnected and drove off to safety.

While it still remains to be seen if Russian can move fully-loaded trains across the rail-bridge in the near-future, this attack is likely Ukraine's Doolittle raid in that it shows that even distanced from the conflict, the war still can come to them. It's a big political loss for Putin and a massive Russian national embarrassment.
 
Speaking of interrupted trains in Europe, could the following be connected to the overall conflict or merely be its own independent thing?
"
Sabotage of the infrastructure in Germany: Train traffic stopped this morning in the whole north!
Oct 8, 2022
"

 
Added to that, why did the engineer stop? Was there a derailment? Wouldn't the SOP for such an emergency be to get the heck off the bridge, if at all possible, to avoid further damage?
That's just it, you don't know what's happening to the track under the burning cars; and you don't know if they have enough structural integrity to transmit the drawbar pull of the locomotives shortly ahead of them to the remainder of the train.

Assuming that the epicenter of the explosion(-s) was on the road bridge (spans in the water), the concussion wave from the blast(-s) would have done a number on the locomotive, and its engineers and operators. Likely concussed and/or injured. I doubt Russian railways had any SOP for this eventuality, and if they did, no-one had trained for it. Ever.
Not to mention that the concussive wave would have re-arranged their grey matter and their life's priorities.

I bet they got the hell out of the locomotive and made a beeline to the nearest bar. The train is still on the bridge, a day after.

It seems to me that it would be difficult, almost impossible, for a bomb on the highway bridge to catch, not one, but several railcars on fire simultaneously.

Depends on how much shrapnel is involved.
If a truck bomb was laden with artillery shells - very likely.
ATACMS impact from a 500 lbs warhead - definitely maybe.

Shrapnel would shred a few nearby oil tanks and get the fire going. Then the fire spreads to neighboring tanks, rinse, repeat.

That was quite a blast, the tank cars could easily have been punctured by shrapnel. Also could have had burning material from the bomb itself strike them.

The key question is the state of the rail bridge. Even more so than that the road spans (a set of lanes in one direction is still up).
Rail supplies are essential in Russian military doctrine and logistics (as challenges as those have been already), so if the RAIL spans are compromised, then the primary path for military supplies to Crimea and Kherson have been put out of commission.
By the looks of it, the rail-road spans are made out of steel (exact quality TBD). And they have now seen better days (pic on the right).

1665271717965.png 1665272821682.png

Diesel fires can reach 815C/1500F, and it looks like multiple spans were effected.
Per the American Institute of Steel Construction, at around 600C/1100F, steel loses 50% of its strength.

Depending on the time exposure of steel to the fire, and the intensity of the fire, the spans may have been partially compromised.
How badly? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
 
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I don't think it was a truck bomb. The Guardian footage shows the blast happening to the right of the road. All those glowing bits in the video are from the bomb[?] and they are moving from right to left. It had to be a large bomb. I have seen 500lb up to 2000lb bombs go off and there isn't a large fireball like that. But then they were hitting the ground rather than a bridge, and I was a few miles away, although there was a giant video screen showing the impacts from closer. The ATACMS use a 500lb warhead and the blast looks much larger than that. Trouble with that guesstament is the spans in the water don't look like they got hit with a large bomb. I wonder if a under water bomb might have done it. Maybe a bunch of sea mines.
 
At first the blast seemed too big to be a truck Bomb, but After looking at Oklahoma City bombing pics it seems possible . The truck on the bridge is larger than the one used by Timothy McVeigh.
 
I don't think it was a truck bomb. The Guardian footage shows the blast happening to the right of the road. All those glowing bits in the video are from the bomb[?] and they are moving from right to left. It had to be a large bomb. I have seen 500lb up to 2000lb bombs go off and there isn't a large fireball like that. But then they were hitting the ground rather than a bridge, and I was a few miles away, although there was a giant video screen showing the impacts from closer. The ATACMS use a 500lb warhead and the blast looks much larger than that. Trouble with that guesstament is the spans in the water don't look like they got hit with a large bomb. I wonder if a under water bomb might have done it. Maybe a bunch of sea mines.
I agree. The more I look at the video the more it looks like the explosion is coming upwards from the lower right, out of view. But what ever caused it/how it was done is was a very large explosion. And as I noted in an earlier post the direction the truck was traveling was from the East, the Russian side of the bridge.
 
ATACMS impact from a 500 lbs warhead - definitely maybe.
Everyone seems to focus on that number. The warhead is the same used in the Harpoon and has a net explosive weight less than half that.

There are of course videos from WSMR of flight tests including impact on the target to be found on YouTube.
 
From an AP article:
"The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted a video with the Kerch Bridge on fire and Marilyn Monroe singing her “Happy Birthday Mr. President” song. Putin turned 70 on Friday."
Well played, Mr. Danilov…well played!
 
From an AP article:
"The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted a video with the Kerch Bridge on fire and Marilyn Monroe singing her “Happy Birthday Mr. President” song. Putin turned 70 on Friday."
Shoot, the Putin bastid is only 4 years older than me. I turned 66 on 10/02. Turning out to be as bad as Khrushchev and Stalin. Though admittedly Khrushchev probably didn't kill as many in the gulags and work camps as Stalin. Stalin was the "king" of killing Russians and native peoples in their territory claimed by Russia by famine and execution. Maybe 20 million dead. Makes Adolf Hitler look like a "wimps#it". Read about the "Great Purge" in the Soviet Union and the several famines that occurred over the years in that country in the name of the "Great Socialism". Pitiful, very pitiful!
I hope Ukraine (though it's said they will lose the war. I hope not.) whips their Russian ass to no end no matter WHAT!
Some news outlets report that many young Russian men don't want to be drafted into a stupid, dead-end war. Shades of the American Vietnam War protests, the Russian backed Korea and Afghanistan wars too. Young Russian men don't want to die in a stupid "useless" foreign war! Good for them!
I bet they just want to get a good local job that is paid decently, get married and raise a good family that begets them a few grandchildren they can enjoy in their old age. That is an age old desire for everyone across ethnic lines!!!!

Kurt
 
I saw today that the talk of sending Ukraine Leopard MBT's has heated up. Maybe Ukraine will get them this time. They have them on the ropes. Let's pile it on.

And, there sure are a lot of 1956 babies. It seems half the people I know were born in '56.
 
There are lots of news reports today about Russian retaliation for the Crimea bridge bombing. Lots of Russian cruise missiles and aerial bombing of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, energy infrastructure, residential areas, etc.

Putin took the bridge attack personally, I think. Boo-hoo widdle Pooty-poot. Did somebody bweak yoo favowite bwidge? Awwwwww…

The bridge is a strategic resource, so if Ukraine can do it, they should hit it again and take it out fully. Cutting that supply route would help them in their Kherson offensive. The bridge is also symbolic, and destroying it would weaken Russian morale.

Some of Russia’s cruise missile attacks today were launched by ships in the Black Sea. I wonder if they moved into range of Ukrainian Neptunes and drones.
 
Looking like bridge job was a boat bomb,

Russia's Response to Kerch Bridge Attack
Oct 10, 2022 Russia has replaced the overall leader of military forces in Ukraine with General Sergei Surovikin. A military officer with a history of crushing protesters with armored vehicles and decimating cities with artillery in Chechnya and Syria.

 
It's funny. I've seen a number of purported experts (honestly, I can't tell how expert they are) with 100% diametrically opposed positions. There's a camp that says that it was 100% a boat bomb, and a camp that says it was 100% a truck bomb. I suppose at some point we'll know. If it was a truck bomb, I really wonder what happened at the truck inspection before it got on the bridge. The truck bomb folks are all saying it was 2000+ pounds of explosives, which is several barrels worth of ammonium nitrate-fuel oil. It's kinda hard to hide that big a bomb.

Regardless, a bridge used to carry military equipment is absolutely fair game under the Geneva Conventions. Playgrounds and apartment blocks are not.
 
It's funny. I've seen a number of purported experts (honestly, I can't tell how expert they are) with 100% diametrically opposed positions.
That relates to something I just read,
https://www.ft.com/content/6e807a1a-f5b7-4e04-8770-6dec3835f13c
But the strategy of disinformation, evasiveness and counteraccusation from Ukraine and its allies about the audacious attack allows them to sow disinformation or at least confusion — and keeps the Kremlin, as well as influential military bloggers and hawkish television presenters, guessing at Ukraine’s capabilities.
 
Forensics aside, a truck bomb would require either remotely controlling the vehicle after it has passed the inspection point with the driver disembarked and vulnerable to capture, or a driver that was an unwitting enemy combatant. Suicide truck bombs do not play well in the western information space, so it would need to be covered up with an ongoing risk of exposure. It all seems much more complicated than a remotely controlled boat or even a missile, so I would go with Occam’s Razor on this one.
 
It's funny. I've seen a number of purported experts (honestly, I can't tell how expert they are) with 100% diametrically opposed positions. There's a camp that says that it was 100% a boat bomb, and a camp that says it was 100% a truck bomb. I suppose at some point we'll know. If it was a truck bomb, I really wonder what happened at the truck inspection before it got on the bridge. The truck bomb folks are all saying it was 2000+ pounds of explosives, which is several barrels worth of ammonium nitrate-fuel oil. It's kinda hard to hide that big a bomb.

Regardless, a bridge used to carry military equipment is absolutely fair game under the Geneva Conventions. Playgrounds and apartment blocks are not.
The more I look at the video of the explosion the more I'm convinced that the the explosion came from down below on the right side of the video.
 
Forensics aside, a truck bomb would require either remotely controlling the vehicle after it has passed the inspection point with the driver disembarked and vulnerable to capture, or a driver that was an unwitting enemy combatant. Suicide truck bombs do not play well in the western information space, so it would need to be covered up with an ongoing risk of exposure. It all seems much more complicated than a remotely controlled boat or even a missile, so I would go with Occam’s Razor on this one.
I agree with all of that. I also find it hard to square an unwitting driver with a truck inspection. I suppose they could have slotted the bomb barrels into a legitimate delivery of barrels to Crimea that had appropriate paperwork, but I would think that the risk of exposure is far, far higher. On the other hand, an unwitting driver isn't going to tip off the inspectors by acting weird at the checkpoint.
 
Watch the video Modeltrains posted. (Who is the guy in the video by the way?)
Yes, he makes a strong case that the object appearing in the water above the pylon was a barge. Others are less committal. The charring pattern on the road decks towards the railway seems to radiate away from the pylon which somehow survived the high explosive.
 
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