chrisl

Looking at the side view, the span that's dropped that's separated by an "intact" span may just had the far end pulled off it's pier as the two spans near the train went. It looks like it's still aligned straight and didn't get pushed sideways.

Dashcam video. (edit: probably fake?) The replies have key frames pulled out as stills

You might have to DIY from satellite pics - the resolution is good enough to pick out individual tire marks on fields. I do that kind of thing regularly for unmapped hiking trails that are visible on satellite pics.

Is there any reporting on the timing of the Kharkiv missile strikes relative to the time of the bridge going?

Anybody who can slip a bomb onto a rail car can slip a bomb into a truck or crate that's going onto a ferry or barge. Watch for an attack into the land bridge to take enough distance to at least keep any rail traffic along the land bridge under fire. (edit: or maybe it's already in range according to LLF's post above)

Swimming lessons

That looks like maybe some guardrail blown out by the train blast, but I'm sticking with the lateral displacement from the car going up. Given that there's a second segment in the water with a still in-place segment in between the downed ones, there were probably at least two explosions - maybe one initial charge back where the first segment is down, then after the train rolled a little farther the second one that displaced the segment that's nearest us.

If it were properly designed it also would have to take into account earthquakes moving the ground underneath in all axes with the road on top wanting to stay in place due to inertia and the longitudinal constraint. Looks like they probably didn't account for that...

I've been watching LAX crane together the guideway for the new people mover for the past couple years. They're doing lifts like that on the regular, but it's after more than a decade of engineering and planning (because California and probably being designed for a 9.0). But they're not doing them over water. I suspect those segments are lighter and more flexible than they should be so that they could slap together the whole bridge as fast as they did, and the flexibility contributed to them coming out of place.

Just you watch them try...

Here's a good one from the same guy showing the intact segments in the water (clipped out the tweet because @FancyCat beat me to it by seconds) Being Russian and having no regard for safety, they could crane those segments back onto the piers in a couple of days and be driving trucks across it by the middle of next week.

I think the technical term is "That bridge is completely f$$%ed"

This view is good. But I'm questioning my burning road theory - something on the road should be on fire if it's correct. But it just dropped. Alternate theory is that the road segments are just resting atop the piers with lateral constraints, but no longitudinal constraint (to allow for expansion) and no vertical constraint (because bridges are heavy and gravity pulling it onto the pier would hold it in place) and the exploding rail car caused enough displacement that the adjacent road segments came unconstrained laterally and moved enough to drop.

And does the local fire department have trains? And how are the spans supported - will having a few spans out make it easier for adjacent spans to drop? Firefighting boats might be the best option, but unless they have foam to mix in, all they're going to do is mix flaming fuel around. They could maybe cool down adjacent cars and the road to keep more tank cars from going up and the rail spans from weakening further.

I kind of wonder if it was more effective than planned. That it's a burning fuel train isn't a surprise - if they have an insider they could put a GPS triggered bomb on a fuel car far from the bridge, without necessarily even knowing approximately when it would get there, and set a train on fire on the tracks. I read an article a while back - I don't recall if it was linked here or I found it on search - that pointed out that the bridge is poorly constructed. I may have found the article because I was digging around and the bridge was built way too fast to believe that there was complete engineering done for the seabed mounts. Here's a link to the 2017 article I'd read before: Russia’s Crimea Bridge Could Collapse Anytime And a second article from 2018: Kerch Strait Bridge to "snap in one moment": Expert explains "point of no return" Looking at the pictures in the OSINT post it's hard to sort out how many places the road is collapsed. The first picture shows two steep "ramps" but the ones that show the rail bridge burning up close show a supported span that's ramping down to one of the landfalls and that's had several of the road spans collapse. edit: now I see it's the same road span, but the steep ramps are later in time after the spans have fully dropped. From the buckling of the steel on the rail span it looks like burning fuel might have blown out the side of the tank car onto the road span, and the heat from the fuel (and maybe burning asphalt surface?) weakened the road supports enough to drop. They look blackened in the Andrew Perpetua post.

Another view says road span and apparently shows it buckled and in the water, but also the rail bridge on fire. (ninjaed by seconds because I was staring at the picture too long trying to sort out what's going on with the road)

Rail bridge or road? Ideally they hit the rail first and leave one road lane open for a while.

Large wool socks can do double duty as caps in the winter.

There's a blast from the past. About 10% of those 400 years ago I did a report on False Dmitry in a high school Russian History class.

Is it me or does the ERA on that part of the turret look like it's oriented the wrong way for frontal shots? There's what looks like a very damaged ERA mount point just above the entry hole, and the neighboring ERA looks like it's better oriented for a top attack, like from a Javelin or air-launched attack. The way those blocks are oriented, it looks like the round could have come in nearly parallel to the plates and just hit the explosive.

In some places that means your socks will be wet 8 months out of the year.

Not to mention the importance of bloody socks in Russian literature and übermensch culture.

Which is kind of silly because if it's monochromatic all you have to do is ignore that wavelength or band that includes that wavelength. If they're pointed statically and shining up, they're entirely for show and not doing anything besides send a message that says "blow me up next" This seems to be the most likely answer: It's entirely plausible that the system never actually worked. They may have built something that lased with a high output, and they may even have done a demo where they set something on fire at some moderate distance. But there are some relevant technologies that I suspect RU doesn't do very well, if at all, that are necessary to keep the both keep from toasting your own optics and get the beam through the atmosphere without scattering all the energy away.

The alleged range is up to 1500 km, but the claims of capability sound a little unrealistic. And if they’re just on steady state they sound more like self illuminating targets than death rays. edit- looks like I grabbed the wrong quote. This was supposed to quote @Haiduk and the death rays. I’m too inept with editing posts on the phone to fix it.

Especially if the winter follows a mud season where the UA can prevent RU from supplying by rail. Trains are relatively immune to rain and mud unless there’s a slide onto or out from under the tracks. So if Ukraine can keep taking rail hubs like Lyman and also keep hitting rail routes, they can make supply much harder for RU. Russian truck based supply still seems really deficient, and if they have to drive through mud it will get much worse.