poesel

This is a comment from another forum, and as an engineer I think this is totally correct:
The rail bridge was engulfed in a high intensity fire for hours. This will most likely have compromised the steel inside the concrete beams. Those bridge elements usually consist of prestressed concrete, meaning concrete that contains steel cables under tension when poured. This gives the elements stability and rigidity. In a high intensity fire those cables heat up which leads to the tension being released. Even after cooling, the tension is gone. The elements might look ok, but their load baring capabilities are most likely severely compromised.

TL;DR: rail bridge is ****ed. Good luck sending heavy trains over it
 
Edit: just found out I don't have to add the **** myself

This is a comment from another forum, and as an engineer I think this is totally correct:
The rail bridge was engulfed in a high intensity fire for hours. This will most likely have compromised the steel inside the concrete beams. Those bridge elements usually consist of prestressed concrete, meaning concrete that contains steel cables under tension when poured. This gives the elements stability and rigidity. In a high intensity fire those cables heat up which leads to the tension being released. Even after cooling, the tension is gone. The elements might look ok, but their load baring capabilities are most likely severely compromised.

TL;DR: rail bridge is ****ed. Good luck sending heavy trains over it
 
Edit: just found out I don't have to add the **** myself

RAILWAY.       X Airburst 
     ||.                     X  or Airburst (more likely) 
     ||.             ROAD 1.    ROAD 2.
     ||                   ||.              ||
~~||~~~~~~~~||~~~~~~~||~~~~ water
 
1. Railway is still in place 
2. Road 1 still in place
3. Road 2 broken AND PUSHED OFF
 
So, 
- Railway not directly impacted.  Light guard rails are blown off but a shockwave from exploding railway tank explains that. 
- Road 1 not directly impacted. It's scorched but surface is still intact. Structure took a downward hit but is structurally configured to absorb downward force. Blast centerpoint was far enough away (ie high enough) and possibly enough off the road axis that significant  blast missed the road span itself. 

- Road 2 possibly directly impacted BUT: (A) it's broken in two similar positions and lies in similar arrangement, (B) it's pushed off its piers, the spans are not structured to survive that type of twisting deformation (from direct force and sudden change in dead load configuration). So Road 2 took downward angled force, that shoved it laterally away, sheering the connection to its purr.  Not the steel pinning themselves -  they still stand up, so probably the concrete /steel of the span was ripped through by the pins as it moved sideways, away from the blast center.  Once off the pier centers the span folded and broke from its own weight (not impacts) and also the current catching it and shoving it back against its own piers.
This was no truck bomb, is my thinking. 
A missile (maybe two, if they blew perfectly simultaneously). 
@Battlefront.com
I think the missing piece of info that will explain/refute various ideas will be when we see the Road 2 spans that are currently submerged, Esp the part adjacent to the large scorch mark on Road 1.
 

 

Depends. If the most (by far) common reason for retirement for a piece of equipment is 'old age' (at least for European armies in the last 70 or so years), then a capacity of 'a few a year' is more than enough to replace stuff lost to accidents.
OTOH if you build an assembly line that can do 100s or 1000s a year, run it for a month and then mothball it - your taxpayers will kill you.

I find you a bit harsh mate. I understand the questioning of the command (without saying that it is justified). The role of the general staff is to maintain operational and territorial defense capability. The French army has already given 1/4 of its CAESARs, which is quite substantial, while the army must maintain a projection capacity in Overseas and Africa. NATO also needs to be prepared for any eventuality. The decrease in the quantity of material also means less material to train and therefore less good quality units. This is especially true in the case of CAESARs, because fewer CAESARs = fewer soldiers training. After all reserves that's all. Even the USA announced (yesterday ? can't remember) that they were going to reduce their supply of modern munitions and replace it with something older because it is starting to seriously impact their operational and training capacity. As a saying goes with us, "To Command is to foresee".

 

silly boy, rich people don't pay taxes..   😎

On top of this, you have to maintain the skills of the people operating the production line. That is a non-trivial ask. You can't keep a full crew for a "wartime production" line sitting there getting thumb-RSI when you only need a couple a year. And getting folk who've never built a thing before up to speed on a modern production line can also be problematic. We started producing an upgrade to one of our old models at the start of August, and the line still isn't above 2/3 velocity. Every day seems to upchuck a new problem. CESAR is significantly more complicated than what I help build.

It's one reasons countries like to have a thriving arms export business. With the whole world to sell to, they can keep their tank-founders and helmet-dishers gainfully employed and in practice for when the balloon goes up and your own army needs to expand/replace significant losses quickly.

No. For Ukrainian mentality never matter expansionism and superiority, aggressive demonstration and boasting by own brutal force, cruelty etc. In times of Tsar and Soviet Union was supporting typical stereotype of Ukrainian - good-natured, mild, wily, сunning, industrious, but slightly lazy and hidebound farmer. And this in some aspects is matched. And some Russian literature classics often contraposed mores of Russians and Ukrainans. Of course, in Soviet times, during huge industrialization and moving of pupulation masses happened some sort of russification (and I would say sovetization), especially in eastern regions.
Though, even Soviet culture didn't propagansize such cult of war, violence and own superiority. Such sharp concentrated mixture of violence,  brutality, chauvinism in Russian mentaluty theese are consequenses of Putin's TV-upbringing. When your TV filled with dozens films about wars, about "criminal romance", where bandits are "good guys with own honour codex", when from TV shows and in schools continously repeat that all hardships of life are because evil West collapsed and divided USSR - the "great and noble country, which rescue the world from fascism" and cult of Victory Day turned in anti-western "we can repeat" - all this gradually shift your mind and enforce worst Russian features of mentality. But despite Russian mass-culture in theese years conquerred Ukrainian TV air and media market, it had much less influence on Ukranians, than on Russians. Probably because of we really "are not you". Though, Ukrainans as frontier-metality nation easily can turn from "placid farmers" to "fierce devils" on battlefield.  We have even proverb "when Ukrainians are scared, all around don't care, but when Ukrainans don't care all around are scared"

My solar array just went live yesterday... woot!  Love watching that meter run in reverse and with that let's go back to Ukraine and not US energy politics.

If I think about that we just reserved 200B€ to keep gas & electricity prices low, we should rather have spent that money on Ukraine and the war would be over by now... (no, it wouldn't, I know. But you get my drift)
Though I hope that it is true, the source is BILD and that makes it automatically untrue (most of the time). BILD is really the worst. Let's hope, that we have a second source.

Apologies in advance to the German forum members and the good Herr Oberst, it is uncalled for but I could not help myself. The title of this is so Deutsche Wochenschau 1943....

I think that was rather a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and this guy: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth
Since the center of gravity of the whole gun assembly is probably directly over the wheels, there is not much force going into the barrel. Mostly from the drag from the wheels, which is in line with the barrel. That is a direction a pipe can handle well.
Also, not much of a momentum for the same reason. The only input here is drag difference from the wheels. But the length of the lever for this is in proportion to the length of the gun very small, so small momentum.
It may be a bit reckless to pull a gun by the barrel, but it is actually quite clever. I can't imagine the ridicule the engineer that first thought of it had to go through.

Yup, the 'gg' is also accepted spelling I think. It would be bad juju to piss off Yog-Sothot/Yog-Soggoth. You even found a picture with the weird green ray (since I am not Lovecraft I can't come up with a baroque juxtaposition of adjectives to describe it properly).
Didn't know about that book @danfrodo, sounds interesting!

I think that was rather a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and this guy: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth
Since the center of gravity of the whole gun assembly is probably directly over the wheels, there is not much force going into the barrel. Mostly from the drag from the wheels, which is in line with the barrel. That is a direction a pipe can handle well.
Also, not much of a momentum for the same reason. The only input here is drag difference from the wheels. But the length of the lever for this is in proportion to the length of the gun very small, so small momentum.
It may be a bit reckless to pull a gun by the barrel, but it is actually quite clever. I can't imagine the ridicule the engineer that first thought of it had to go through.

I think that was rather a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and this guy: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth
Since the center of gravity of the whole gun assembly is probably directly over the wheels, there is not much force going into the barrel. Mostly from the drag from the wheels, which is in line with the barrel. That is a direction a pipe can handle well.
Also, not much of a momentum for the same reason. The only input here is drag difference from the wheels. But the length of the lever for this is in proportion to the length of the gun very small, so small momentum.
It may be a bit reckless to pull a gun by the barrel, but it is actually quite clever. I can't imagine the ridicule the engineer that first thought of it had to go through.

I think that was rather a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and this guy: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth
Since the center of gravity of the whole gun assembly is probably directly over the wheels, there is not much force going into the barrel. Mostly from the drag from the wheels, which is in line with the barrel. That is a direction a pipe can handle well.
Also, not much of a momentum for the same reason. The only input here is drag difference from the wheels. But the length of the lever for this is in proportion to the length of the gun very small, so small momentum.
It may be a bit reckless to pull a gun by the barrel, but it is actually quite clever. I can't imagine the ridicule the engineer that first thought of it had to go through.

I think that was rather a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and this guy: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth
Since the center of gravity of the whole gun assembly is probably directly over the wheels, there is not much force going into the barrel. Mostly from the drag from the wheels, which is in line with the barrel. That is a direction a pipe can handle well.
Also, not much of a momentum for the same reason. The only input here is drag difference from the wheels. But the length of the lever for this is in proportion to the length of the gun very small, so small momentum.
It may be a bit reckless to pull a gun by the barrel, but it is actually quite clever. I can't imagine the ridicule the engineer that first thought of it had to go through.

I think that was rather a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and this guy: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yog-Sothoth
Since the center of gravity of the whole gun assembly is probably directly over the wheels, there is not much force going into the barrel. Mostly from the drag from the wheels, which is in line with the barrel. That is a direction a pipe can handle well.
Also, not much of a momentum for the same reason. The only input here is drag difference from the wheels. But the length of the lever for this is in proportion to the length of the gun very small, so small momentum.
It may be a bit reckless to pull a gun by the barrel, but it is actually quite clever. I can't imagine the ridicule the engineer that first thought of it had to go through.

The biggest hint that there will be no offensive from Zaporizhia is, that the Russians know about it.
At least not now. Let the Russians mount their defenses there. As soon as Kherson falls and UAF threatens to cross the Dnepr, the Russians will have to move forces westwards. Then the offensive comes.

Asked that one before and nobody knows apparently. None has been seen beeing used in UKR in media, but neither has been the Gepard...yet. Its combat worthiness in 2022 might be doubtful maybe, but the Wiki info I found fairly interesting.
Combat use
On 1 June 1982, during the Falklands War, Sea Harrier XZ456 was destroyed south of Stanley, by a Roland launched by members of the Argentine Army's GADA 601 (601st AA Artillery Group).[17] The launcher, one of four examples delivered to Argentina, was later captured in fairly intact condition by the British around Port Stanley after the surrender. It was taken back to Britain as a valuable prize and studied in detail.[citation needed]
At around 11:00PM on the 17th of January, 1991, an A-6E TRAM Intruder from VA-35, AA-510 (BuNo 161668), crewed by Lt. Bob Wetzel and Lt. Jeff Zaun was attacked by two Rolands while attacking the H-3 Airfield in Western Iraq. The Roland didn't set off the American built RWRs, meaning that it was hard to detect. After evading the first Roland, another one (which the crew didn't see), impacted the aircraft. The crew successfully ejected but were soon captured.[15] On 19 January 1991, during the Gulf War a RAF Panavia Tornado GR.1 ZA396/GE, on a SEAD mission against the Iraqi air base at Tallil, was destroyed by a Roland. Both crew members ejected successfully, were taken prisoner and survived the war. The destruction of at least one USAF A-10 Thunderbolt destroyed at around the same time, was later attributed to a Roland,[18] by the Pentagon.
 
Even if its AA capabilities is fairly worthless nowadays I´d assume at least the chassis (IFV or truck) could benefit UKR forces mobility. Strip off the AA stuff and have some IFV or armored carrier again.

If I think about that we just reserved 200B€ to keep gas & electricity prices low, we should rather have spent that money on Ukraine and the war would be over by now... (no, it wouldn't, I know. But you get my drift)
Though I hope that it is true, the source is BILD and that makes it automatically untrue (most of the time). BILD is really the worst. Let's hope, that we have a second source.

If I think about that we just reserved 200B€ to keep gas & electricity prices low, we should rather have spent that money on Ukraine and the war would be over by now... (no, it wouldn't, I know. But you get my drift)
Though I hope that it is true, the source is BILD and that makes it automatically untrue (most of the time). BILD is really the worst. Let's hope, that we have a second source.

Rest of the video further in the thread:
 

More to the point, what will the cost be if NATO nations don't support Ukraine to defeat Russia?

Some interesting thoughts from Tom Cooper on the nature of the ground war.
Full article here https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-4-october-2022-kherson-da84b46d8131
It's a lengthy read, but well worth the effort given previous conversations here 
Quote to whet the appetite
P