acrashb

When viewed from space Elon musk’s ego causes a minor eclipse of Zelensky’s balls, but only briefly. 

Elon Musk denied the report from VICE. The thing is VICE is reporting that Ian Bremmer stated this, including that he spoke to Elon Musk who informed him about talking to Putin. So guess it's a question of who's lying.

I break it down this this way: 
1. Is he still trying to win? (Yes)
2. Does a NATO entry help him win? (No)
3. If NATO enters and he loses, does that let him off the hook domestically? (No)
4. If he wanted NATO in would he have done so already? (Yes)
5. Would it be easy to bring NATO in? (Very)
Until the answer to questions 1 or 2 start to change, you can bet he's not looking for NATO entry.

About bloody time - and not just for Germany.
 
I will remind all of us of ISW's summary from October 6, only a few days ago:

"As ISW reported yesterday, Russian forces do not appear to be focusing these [Iranian] drones on asymmetric nodes near the battlefield. They have used many drones against civilian targets in rear areas, likely hoping to generate nonlinear effects through terror. Such efforts are not succeeding."
If these missile and drone strikes will not achieve their goals, as ISW says (and I agree), then why do they happen?  Culture.

If a culture thinks that brutality succeeds, then things are seen through that lens.  I've seen it at some corporations, where effectiveness metrics are replaced by "how tough do we want to be".  It ain't about tough, it's about does it work. 

Russian military culture, which of course mirrors the larger culture, is about "how brutal do we want to be", as evidenced in all of their recent wars and in WWII, where my Romanian friend(s) describe their family's experiences with Russian soldiery as "savage". 
 

It wasn't accidental, Churchill, had to get the pressure off Fighter Commands airfields, whatever the bill. Perhaps the last time A Western leader made a decision that hard.

IRIS-T SLM almost in Ukraine:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-german-iris-t-slm-air-defense-system-arriving-in-days
I haven't seen anyone bring this up yet but these revenge attacks remind me of The Battle of Britain when Britain accidently bombed a German city instead of a military target.  Germany started attacking British cities and quit focusing on British military targets.  This allowed Britain to win this particular battle.  History seems to repeat itself.
 

And one more, this is how hot the train fire was:
https://streamable.com/0tow6w
Melting steel is 'really' hot (I'll leave it to others to google).  Steel rebar loses its strength well below melting point.  Ergo the bridge is damaged, and may not last very long.

About bloody time - and not just for Germany.
 
I will remind all of us of ISW's summary from October 6, only a few days ago:

"As ISW reported yesterday, Russian forces do not appear to be focusing these [Iranian] drones on asymmetric nodes near the battlefield. They have used many drones against civilian targets in rear areas, likely hoping to generate nonlinear effects through terror. Such efforts are not succeeding."
If these missile and drone strikes will not achieve their goals, as ISW says (and I agree), then why do they happen?  Culture.

If a culture thinks that brutality succeeds, then things are seen through that lens.  I've seen it at some corporations, where effectiveness metrics are replaced by "how tough do we want to be".  It ain't about tough, it's about does it work. 

Russian military culture, which of course mirrors the larger culture, is about "how brutal do we want to be", as evidenced in all of their recent wars and in WWII, where my Romanian friend(s) describe their family's experiences with Russian soldiery as "savage". 
 

it is enough in the sense of restoring the territorial integrity of Ukraine.  I think however Russia needs to be treated as the pariah state it is.  To restore relations to the west, Russia needs to pay reparations and war crimes trials.  Until that happens the west should continue to isolate Russia economically and politically.

It doesn’t have to be nearly that hot to lose strength.  Even ~200 C you have to derate it by about 10%, and about 50% by 500 C, depending on the steel.  So you can relax out the prestress at temps much lower than where it gets soft.

No need to google
Steel will get soft (or forgeable) at around 1150 - 1250 °C. Melting begins at around 1400 °C. That amount of heat has surely gotten into the rebars, especially since it burned quite long. The structural integrity of this bridge is toast.

And one more, this is how hot the train fire was:
https://streamable.com/0tow6w
Melting steel is 'really' hot (I'll leave it to others to google).  Steel rebar loses its strength well below melting point.  Ergo the bridge is damaged, and may not last very long.

In something like this it isn't necessarily about what alternative pick you want but what your actionable alternatives are. Yes the rail would be a preferred target but it depends on what assets you have in place where and what their capabilities are. If you have assets with the means and capability to use the truck and don't have suitable infiltration to mine a rail car you have to go with the truck. So it probably is a case of going with what they had, either missile or truck.
It's a lot like smuggling drugs in the US. The vast, vast majority is moving from south to north and west to east. Every now and then one will get popped out of sync. When your connection is in Chicago and not Seattle, you have to get your dope from where you can. You'd really rather buy it out of Seattle (rail) as it is of higher grade and costs less but your only connection is Chicago (truck) so you get what you can from where you can.

And that was just a fertilizer bomb (ammonium Nitrate), a truck full of weapons grade explosives could easily take down a bridge.  For what it's worth, it looks like either a missile or a truck bomb, one or the other.

Either with us or without us .... congratulations on winning comedy hour with a false dichotomy.  I support a Ukrainian victory, I have a flushable toilet and know how to use it, so I tick the civilization box if that is the measure by which civilization has been judged occasionally in this thread.  I am not and never have suggested that Ukraine should cease existing, and I am not taking the Russian side.  So "hypocritically" shall I take a dump on the floor for expressing this view?

All you need is a massive amount of ammonium nitrate, and as Oliver Alexander noted, this would be consistent with all the bits of burning material raining down after the explosion.  A unitary HE warhead would consume all the explosive material instantly. Incidentally, this is also why the collapsed parts of the span at the explosion site are less scorched.  The horizontal surfaces around it accumulated more of the burning material that was showering down.
I mean Timothy McVeigh managed the same almost entirely on his own. I think the SBU could pull it off.

Apologies to Gary Larson

I'm still not even convinced there's a boat there at all.  It kind of looks like a bit of wind driven whitecap.  I spent some time stepping through that video when it first showed up and didn't see it continue to the left across the screen (I guess since it was the bomb...), since I still haven't seen even minimally convincing evidence that the explosion came from anywhere but above the bridge deck.
It was a pretty windy night.  The videos of the water show a lot of whitecaps, and a huge amount of the splash got blown back over the bridge, and somehow a lot of people are convinced that the light scattered from the droplets is WP.  A) There was a ginormous splash and a strong wind, and water droplets scatter light really well, and b) WP would probably leave some serious marks on the asphalt road surface, if not set it on fire (which would have been kind of awesome).

My opinion of Russian competence is a low as anyone's, but even they seem to understand that 155 range to Nova Khahovka is the only thing that really matters. Their current defensive line appears to have been selected with this exact factor in mind. As soon as they get pushed from any major portion of it, and standard 155 shells start raining on Nova Khahovka the Russian position in the northern part of the pocket is untenable. They will be South of the Inhulets in days. Any defenses around Nova Khahovka proper are pure copium.
Musk was not born in the U.S. and therefore cannot be President. I doubt there is any other political job he wants.

Oh cripes, don't go there.

Honestly, I’m a big fan of what Elon Musk is doing in the space flight arena, but I wish he would SHUT UP about Ukraine!  You can’t be an expert at everything Elon. 

Someone, probably on this thread ages go, quipped that anyone can build a bridge that stays up but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stays up. 

That road is probably pretty floppy when you're driving it with the kind of energy a point explosion of a truck bomb (or bigass missile, for Steve) would put in. It's going to both ripple longitudinally and have twisting modes.  It could walk/bounce itself off to the side a little and then tumble to get the amount of offset that's there.  It also looks like the longitudinal beams sit on small pier blocks on top of the big piers, so it would be tipping off those to one side and could have had enough momentum to tumble as much as it did.

Damn...
 

Big, if true. But if this statement is meant to support the Nat notion that Big Bear has been fighting with 'one fist only' to date, it is quite wrongheaded.
What it indicates is that RA could only sustain 60k troops in the field, even before its losses began mounting, and UA began landing heavy punches on its LOCs.
Also, 'tank riders' allowed on all AFVs in the CM modern warfare games, s.v.p.